I have two older laptops, one running DOS 5.0 and one running DOS 6.22. If I copy the 6.22 files (via laplink--dead floppy drive) onto the 5.0 machine, will this work as an install or upgrade? Do any of the configuration files need to be altered? (autoexec.bat, config.sys, etc.) Do I need to change any system settings or somehow configure dos to recognize a different HD size? I am assuming that any current dos driver sets should be maintained, but is there anything else I need to be aware of? Thanks, samboe

No it won't work. The io.sys and msdos.sys files need to be installed. Why don't you just sys the machine you want to install 6.22 on. Make a 6.22 bootable diskette. Copy sys.com to it. Take it to the 5.0 machine and boot to the diskette. Sys C: This will install dos ver. 6.22 on to this machine. You will then need to copy all the dos files. This should work.

"dead floppy drive" <-- on the 5.0 machine could I delete (or move/hide) the 5.0 files and then copy sys.com (and other boot disk files) onto the HD and reboot, thus making it into an internal "bootable diskette"?

You Must use SYS command to transfer DOS system files to HD.

What you have to do is delete all the files in the dos directory or move them to another directory. Then copy the DOS directory files from the 6.22 laptop to the 5.0. That is all there is to it except the hidden booting files IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS have to be changed to the 6.22 version. To do this boot with a 6.22 boot disk and SYS C:. If you cannot do this you have to unhide the boot files by entering ATTRIB -S -H -S IO.SYS and ATTRIB -S -H -R MSDOS.SYS. When you can see these files with a DIR on the 5.0 machine unhide the files on the 6.22 machine the same way and copy the 6.22 files so as to overwrite the 5.0 version files on the laptop with no floppy drive. You then need to ATTRIB +S +H +R all the boot files on each computer and that is that. I am not sure about the interchangeability of the two systems. You may owe Microsoft for an upgrade or something.

unhiding, deleting, and copying the system files won't work. I tried it on a Toshiba T1800. io.sys and msdos sys must be the first files on the drive. The 6.22 version are 7k and 1k bigger. A sector/cluster writer would work. Haven't used on since the old Norton Utilities. SYS is not the only way to copy the system files to the hard drive. IF you have the original 6.22 install floppies, it has an SETUP program that rewrites the system files, however it uses the floppy drive to make an uninstall diskette. Since your floppy doesn't work, I don't think you can bypass this. If it fails you might be stuck with no boot at all. If you can take out the hard drive, your could either put it in the other laptop or in a regular system and install MS-DOS 6.22 in a regular system you need a drive adapter $5-20. In the other laptop it should plug right. However early laptops did not necessarily used standard connectors. Also you need the drive parameters cylinders, heads, sectors. Some of the early bios had their own mapping. I don't think DOS5 had a MSD, but the 6.22 version works on 5.0. If you move the drive to another machine you must be sure that the drive parameters are the same. If you move the drive all you need to do is boot from the setup floppy, SYS it, copy the new DOS files, shutdown, start it up to check if it boots, then stick it back in the old machine.

Somboe, Is it possable to remove the hardrive from the dos 5.0 laptop and install it in the dos 6.22 laptop ? You did not say if the 6.22 laptop has a good floppy drive. You could get a adapter that would let you install the 5.0 drive in a desktop pc.