Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!linac!att!pacbell.com!ucsd!sdcc6!sdcc6.ucsd.edu!cg108w3 From: cg108w3@ucsd.edu (Steve - Happy Hacker) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc Subject: Re: Cnvrt MS-DOS 5.0 from 3.5 to 5.25 HELP (long help) Message-ID: Date: 21 Jun 91 01:40:02 GMT References: <1991Jun18.092013.51422@gmuvax.gmu.edu> Sender: news@sdcc6.ucsd.edu Followup-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc Organization: /home/cg108w/cg108w3/.organization Lines: 137 In-reply-to: juraschek@gmuvax.gmu.edu's message of 18 Jun 91 14:20:13 GMT Originator: cg108w3@icogsci1 --=}>> On 18 Jun 91 14:20:13 GMT, juraschek@gmuvax.gmu.edu said: D> I acquired MS-DOS 5.0 at Egghead at their super bargain extravaganza. D> My principle PC uses 3.5 diskettes, so that's the media I chose. D> My secondary PC, however uses 5.25" diskettes. I wanna break down the D> 3.5's into their equivalent 5.25's so I can upgrade the 5.25" machine D> and know they'll be no problems. D> Could some kind soul post the directories of the 5.25 version of the MS-DOS D> 5.0 upgrade pack so I can make such diskettes from my 3.5's? (Or can someone D> say FOR SURE that it doesn't really matter what the breakdown is - no D> speculations, please.) D> Muchas gracias, amigos. D> -Dave Hot Damn! Over 20 Follow-Ups and NOT ONE answered Dave's question! (I need an intelligent kill file that can detect Legal Drivel and avoid it. :) I ran into a similar problem when I tried to install the 3.5" version on a machine with a 5.25" as A: and the 3.5" as B:. Here's the scoop: The important things are the boot sector info, the boot files (the two hidden/read-only/system/top-secret files in C:\), and the utilities. If you can get these onto a hard disk, you're set. Unlike the older dos versions, the utilities are not usable as the come. They are all compressed and renamed with the extension renamed to underscore and two letters, but renaming them won't help. To install it on my machine, I aborted the Setup after booting 5.0 and ASSIGN'ed a=b, and carried on by running SETUP.EXE. Later I found a swell program called BOOT_B that writes a boot sector to A: that will make the machine boot from B: and swap the A: and B: identifiers automatically. This does the trick very well. If anyone needs it, it's shareware so mail me a note.. If the machine you want to put it on has ONLY a 5.25" drive, then you are in for a little more effort. But it's not impossible (or terribly difficult). Here goes! The easiest way to make a boot disk for 5.25" is to type FORMAT B: /4 /s on a machine running DOS-5 and with a 5.25" drive as B:. If this is not possible, then you will have to take some extra steps to make a bootable 5.25" disk. Ok, the boot part. You will have to get a hold of a computer with some way to transfer files between machines with both drive sizes. A modem or null modem cable, or anything that sends files should work. (The data has to get there somehow, right?) Then get a hold of a shareware program called Teledisk from Symantec software. It turns entire disks into ordinary files that can be used (by Teledisk only) to recreate the source disks verbatim, boot sector and all. I give it a thumbs up. If you can't get Teledisk, find an equivalent of 'dd' on Unix. The MKS Toolkit has one. If nothing else, use Norton's Utilities to write the first raw 360K or so of Disk-1 out to a file. The goal here is to get the BOOT portion of Disk-1 onto 360K format. You will not be able to get all of what is on 3.5" disk, but we will take care of the executable files later. Ok, now you need to make a boot disk for the 5.25" machine. You didn't mention if it was a high or low density drive. If it is a high-density drive, things will be easier later because you can fit all of the original files onto one disk. If not, then you will have to manually fill 360K at a time onto floppy. In any case, write out the first 360K or so of Disk-1 onto the 5.25" disk starting at SECTOR 0. If you are using Norton, write it out to Absolute Sector 0. You are trying to write over the boot sector, so you should get some warnings from some programs. Smile smugly and tell it to go on. If you are using dd, just let it run until it gets a disk error (from hitting the end of the disk). I'm not sure if Teledisk will argue with you, but you should be able to get it to at least write out the first part of the file. Really only the first few tracks count, so if it wrote anything at all, try it out! Hopefully, you now have a DOS-5 bootable 5.25" disk. That's the first part. Boot it on the 5.25 machine and wait for it to come up with the pretty blue Setup screen. This is where you bail out (F3). It should put you back to the prompt on A:. Now you are on your own. (You did back up that machine, right?? If not, power down and go watch Alf instead. :) I think FORMAT was in ready-to-run format, but I am not sure. If it ends in ._EX, then you will have to Expand it. (see below) Now you get to format C: on the destination machine. Be sure that you booted off of the new DOS-5 disk, and you have the DOS-5 version of format handy. If all goes well, you should now be able to boot the destination machine as DOS-5! But, you don't have any of the DOS-5 utilities on there yet, so.... If you can, copy all the .EXE and .COM and whatever else is in the DOS directory on the machine that is already running DOS-5. This will save you the trouble of manually expanding all these utilities on the destination machine. If not, you will have to decompress each of the original DOS utilities yourself. If you have to expand them, here is how: Copy ALL the files from the three 3.5" disks however is convenient. (Laplink, X-modem, writing to 5.25, doesn't matter..) Then you should have a mess of files on C: of the destination machine. Most of them will end in ._EX or ._CO or something similar. There are a few normal programs there, namely SETUP.EXE and EXPAND.EXE (if I remember correctly). EXPAND is the one we are interested in. It turns the programs like SUBST._EX into SUBST.EXE and decompresses them. Painful as it may be, you will have to manually expand each of these files into their respective COM or EXE selves. I think the EXPAND program will give help if you call it with no arguments. It's pretty simple. Ok.. now you have all the decompressed files. When I was installing DOS-5, it was to go on only one machine, and the machine that did have a 3.5" drive was running 3.3 and not to be bothered. SO, I had to decompress the utilities on the destination machine. Whatever works... If all went well, you should be able to boot the new machine and start setting things straight! Good luck to you! Let me know if I have been unclear or wrong about anything here. I don't guarantee that it will work, but I do guarantee that you will have to pull all of your files off of backup after you format. :) -Steve -- }>> Steve Haehnichen <<{ shaehnichen@ucsd.edu Disclaimer: UCSD and I do not share any opinions.