[ct-user] Successfully booted DOS from CD and ran CT from USB stick

[kd4d at comcast.net]

Hi Mal:

That's great.  You could easily put a boot sector and a few
key files on the small DOS partition, install a boot loader
(like GAG) and boot either DOS or XP and dispense with
the CD if you like.

How did you create the CD?

Sounds like you're doing almost exactly what I'm looking at
doing, except using a DOS partition.  Many new computers
have a little "extra" space after the NTFS partition...often 30-50
MBytes.  Your configuration would be easy to set up on them,
since that extra space can be made a DOS partition very
easily.

73,

Mark, KD4D


> I have a small DOS partition on my hard drive. I made a bootable CD from an old 
> WIN98SE boot 'floppy'. When I boot from the CD it doesn't even see the WinXP 
> partition and treats the DOS partition as C: drive. I have, only, CT and a mouse 
> driver installed on the DOS partition. When I'm finished contesting I just boot 
> regularly to XP. The DOS drive then becomes D: and the CT files can easily be 
> managed with any XP file manager. DOS runs really well in a P4 at 4ghz w/1gig of 
> ram.
> That is my solution to CTWIN running in XP. CT DOS is still the finest contest 
> logging program available anywhere..!!!..
>  
> MAL               N7MAL
> BULLHEAD CITY, AZ
> http://www.ctaz.com/~suzyq/N7mal.htm
>   ----- Original Message ----- 
>   From: kd4d at comcast.net 
>   To: ct-user at contesting.com 
>   Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2005 16:24
>   Subject: [ct-user] Successfully booted DOS from CD and ran CT from USB stick
> 
> 
>   Good afternoon, all:
> 
>   I have been successful creating a MS-DOS boot CD, containing a
>   minimal MS-DOS installation, and running CT entirely from a USB
>   memory stick.
> 
>   I have not been able to test this in combat conditions yet, but
>   it is working.  Any volunteers?
> 
>   I installed CT 10.002.001 on the USB stick and fired up the CQWW.
>   CW sending seems to be working.
> 
>   The really neat thing about this is that I can download all of the
>   CT files, cty.dat, and master.dta in Windows and write them to the
>   USB stick in Windows.  Then, reboot from the CD and go.
> 
>   Basically, I booted the CD, with a minimal autoexec.bat and config.sys:
> 
>   autoexec.bat
>   path=a:\;a:\dos71
>   smartdrv a+ c+
> 
>   config.sys
>   DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS /testmem:off
>   DEVICE=emm386.exe noems
>   DOS=high,umb
>   FILES=30
>   BUFFERS=20
> 
>   LASTDRIVE=Z
> 
>   The CD appears as a:.  My USB stick happened to be D:, but yours
>   would probably be c:.
> 
>   I put the CT files in D:\CT10 and created a log directory
>   d:\logs\ct.  I put master.dta and cty.dat in the d:\logs\ct
>   directory (the way I like to configure), and entered
>   path=d:\ct10;%path%.
> 
>   Then,
>   D:
>   cd logs\ct
>   ct
> 
>   and started CT.
> 
>   Using this technique, I can run CT under pure DOS on any
>   computer that supports booting from CD AND has bios
>   recognition of a USB stick without affecting the computer AT
>   ALL, without repartitioning the disk, and without permanately
>   installing DOS.
> 
>   If anyone wants the procedure for creating the bootable CD,
>   drop me an e-mail.  I am looking for volunteers to try this in a 
>   real contest.
> 
>   73,
> 
>   Mark, KD4D
>   _______________________________________________
>   CT-User mailing list
>   CT-User at contesting.com
>   http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/ct-user
>   CT on the web:  http://www.k1ea.com/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> CT-User mailing list
> CT-User at contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/ct-user
> CT on the web:  http://www.k1ea.com/