Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!pacbell.com!mips!sjsca4!poffen
From: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: question about dos
Message-ID: <1990Nov28.223852.12623@sj.ate.slb.com>
Date: 28 Nov 90 22:38:52 GMT
References: <1990Nov26.172206.244@eng.umd.edu> <1427@tnosoes.izf.tno.nl> <1990Nov28.131211.10020@canterbury.ac.nz>
Reply-To: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger)
Organization: Schlumberger Technologies, San Jose, CA.
Lines: 44

In article <1990Nov28.131211.10020@canterbury.ac.nz> cctr132@canterbury.ac.nz writes:
>In article <1427@tnosoes.izf.tno.nl>, joris@tnosoes.izf.tno.nl 
>(Joris Linssen) writes:
>
>> yun@eng.umd.edu (Dragon Taunter) writes:
>> 
>>>I have been handed down an old AT with 512K ram.  It has a full hard
>>>disk which I do not want to overwrite.  How do I upgrade to a newer dos?
>>>I suspect that there is more to it than copying over everything in /DOS
>> 
>> Well, this is supposed to be easy:
>> 
>> 1. Boot your computer from floppy with the new DOS version.
>> 2. After confirming date and time enter SYS A: C: from the command line. 
>>    This will transfer two hidden files from floppy to hard disk.
>> 3. Copy the DOS utility files from A: to the system subdirectory on your hard 
>>    disk, for example C:\DOS
>> 4. Say a quick prayer and reboot you computer from hard disk. Normally this 
>>    works (but then, when does something work normally in a DOS environment :-),
>>    but should a problem occur, you can always restore your old version with 
>>    the same procedure. 
>> 5. In case of trouble contact your local DOS whizard,    
>
>Good advice *EXCEPT* step 2 should also include the instruction:
>         COPY A:COMMAND.COM C:\
>This definitely needs to be done up to (MS) DOS 3.3 (some OEM versions may 
>have SYS copy COMMAND.COM automatically) - don't know about DOS 4, as have
>never installed it.
>
>Without copying the new version of COMMAND.COM to your hard disk, you will get 
>a "Bad or missing command interpreter", or some such, error message.
>

I is possible that you will need to use Norton Utilities or something similar
ro make sure there is enough contiguous space for the two new boot files that
must reside in contiguous blocks at the beginning of the disk. Since the new
DOS has larger boot files (probably), and the disk blocks after the existing
boot files are probably being used by other files, then sys C: will probably
fail.

Russ Poffenberger               DOMAIN: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com
Schlumberger Technologies       UUCP:   {uunet,decwrl,amdahl}!sjsca4!poffen
1601 Technology Drive		CIS:	72401,276
San Jose, Ca. 95110             (408)437-5254