Multiple floppies in one system?

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Thu Feb 28 07:07:32 2002

At 04:59 PM 2/27/02 -0800, you wrote:
>On Thu, 28 Feb 2002, Tony Duell wrote:
>> On the PC/XT (and possibly the PC), it's even stranger. If you set the
>> DIP switches for 4 drives (in which case the machine assumes they're all
>> 360K 40 cylinder units), then they are A: to D:, and the hard disks are
>> E:, F:, etc.
>>
>> If you set the DIP switches for 2 drives (as I have done), then they're
>> assumed to be 360K units (in my case they are), and are A: and B:. Then
>> the hard disks are C:, D:, etc. Then you can load a device driver in
>> config.sys for the other two (external) drives, which then are given
>> letters _adter_ the hard disk partitions (in my case F:, G:). It's
>> amazing how many software installation programs refuse to accept that F:
>> and G: are floppy drives!
>
>Even worse is demented software that refuses to believe that C: is NOT a
>hard disk.
>
>I installed MS-DOS 6.00 (when it first came out) on a machine with 4
>floppies, 2 hard disks, a SCSI Floptical (also 1.4M) and a 2.8M parallel
>port external floppy.
>The install program for 6 refuses to install anywhere other than C:. But
>that's a floppy on that machine, and not big enough for the full install.
>MICROS~1 published a "fix" for those who wanted to install it on drives
>other than C:. Their "fix":
> Install it on C:,
> Copy it from C: to the correct drive.
>I eventually installed it on another, more conventional machine, copied
>the files to floppies, and put it on my machine without their demented
>INSTALL program.

   The Assign command works wonders in cases like these. Unfortunately
MicroSoulth dropped it from their later versions of DOS. Still you can
probaly use a copy from an older DOS and use other DOS cammand (that I
can't think of the name of) to fake it into thinking that it's running
under it's native DOS version.

   Joe
Received on Thu Feb 28 2002 - 07:07:32 GMT