[Trlog] Any interest in Bootable MS-DOS CD's?

[R. Kline]

Hi Mark,
Well, I've succeeded in making the thumb drive bootable.  I did this by
using a "USB 2.0 Cardbus" PCMCIA adapter plugged into my notebook with the
thumb drive plugged into it and then using the downloaded SP27213 program to
make the thumb drive bootable. At first I used DOS 6.22 (using FAT), and
then I redid it using DOS (for Win 98 - don't remember version number -
using FAT 32). I can't boot via the adapter because the BIOS doesn't
recognize it, so I move the thumb drive over to my USB 1.1 socket, and it
boots.  The problem remaining is speed.  When using TR and typing a call
(using the simulator), there is about a 4 second delay after typing is
finished until everything appears on the screen and before TR continues.
I've also noticed that it is not possible to change the CW speed (page up or
page down keys) while the simulator is "sending". This slowness was the same
regardless of the version of DOS that was used.  So, it seems that the
slower USB 1.1 is the culprit. I understand that USB 1.1 is about 1/10 the
speed of USB 2.0.  It seems that I have several options that include: (1)
Trying to get my BIOS to recognize the USB 2.0 PCMCIA adapter and hoping
that with the thumb drive plugged into that will still enable booting into
it.  I sense that even if I could get my BIOS to recognize the adapter,
there will likely be problems doing the DOS boot because of the necessity
for BIOS to do two things in the Boot process. (2)Maybe a better solution is
to use a "ramdrive" that will run TR in RAM.  My notebook has 512 MB of RAM.
I would like to try running a ramdrive.  However, it's been so long since I
played with such things that I'm not sure how to do it. I do have a copy of
ramdrive.exe, but I don't know how to use it. I would be most grateful to
receive copies of config.sys and autoexec.bat that will run TR in ramdrive.
Of course, any other ideas will be most welcome!
Thanks,
73,
Riki, K7NJ - 4X4NJ

-----Original Message-----
From: kd4d at comcast.net [mailto:kd4d at comcast.net]
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 3:16 AM
To: R. Kline
Subject: RE: [Trlog] Any interest in Bootable MS-DOS CD's?


Hi Riki:

Okay.  Do you have a floppy drive?  If you do, try plugging in the
USB stick, turning power on, and booting from a DOS floppy.

If that works, does the memory stick show up as C: or D:?  If
so, do "sys C:" or "sys d:" and you should have a bootable
memory stick.   Let me know what happens.

73,

Mark, KD4D


>
> Hi Mark,
>
> I've been following everything about TR, DOS, thumb drives, etc., all with
> great interest.  My computer has only USB 1.1 available through the BIOS,
> and attempts to make a bootable thumb drive have so far failed because the
> utility for doing this (mentioned on the TR reflector) apparently only
works
> with USB 2.0.  As a consequence, I've only been able to access the thumb
> drive after booting through another means. So far, this has only been
> possible by booting through XP.  I have one more thing that I want to try
to
> overcome this, but most probably, I won't be able to boot the thumb drive
> for the reasons mentioned.
>
> Therefore, I'm VERY interested in being able to boot into DOS from the CD
> drive. Then, hopefully, I could access the thumb drive and run TR having
> plenty of room for the log, etc. My thumb drive is a Sony 256 MB
> "Microvault". My computer's  BIOS offers the option of booting through the
> CD drive, and I have this as the first choice in the "boot order".
> According to the instructions with the thumb drive, it is formatted so
that
> it is compatible with Windows 98, so if a bootable CD has the DOS version
> for Windows 98, everything should work out fine.
>
> Consequently, I would like to try and make a bootable CD that would be
> compatible with the above described requirements.
>
> 73,
> Riki, K7NJ - 4X4NJ
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: trlog-bounces at contesting.com
> [mailto:trlog-bounces at contesting.com]On Behalf Of kd4d at comcast.net
> Sent: Monday, November 15, 2004 7:49 AM
> To: trlog at contesting.com
> Subject: [Trlog] Any interest in Bootable MS-DOS CD's?
>
>
> Good day, all:
>
> As part of my efforts to learn how to dual-boot DOS and Windows
> XP, I have figured out how to create bootable DOS CD's under
> Windows.
>
> This would be necessary to install DOS on a computer without
> a floppy drive, for instance.  You could also load DOS and either
> CT or TR on the CD and run the whole contest.  The difficulty here
> is finding somewhere to write the log file other than memory.
> A USB stick might work, or a hard disk partition of a type other
> than NTFS.  There are two different variants:  one also loads
> a CD driver and can have hundreds of MegaBytes of read-only
> files;  the other is restricted to 1.44 (or 2.88 MBytes) but
> doesn't require loading the CD-ROM drivers.  This frees up more
> low memory and improves performance.
>
> This would also be great for demonstrations or testing of
> different configurations.
>
> I can write up the procedure if there is any interest and a
> volunteer or two to be the guinea pig.  Let me know.
>
> Thanks and 73,
>
> Mark, KD4D
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