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.

You need to make a secount Dos directory call it dos2, copy all you dos 6.22 files to it by laplink go to http://www.bootdisk.com/
and download the Dos 6.22 boot disk file. Make your book disk,make sure sys.com is on the boot disk if not copy it from the Dos 6.22 directory you copied over. rename your original Dos file to someting else DOS5, rename the new Dos directory ( Dos2 ) to DOS. Reboot the computer with the 6.22 boot disk you made, at the command prompt Type ( sys C: )The computer should boot up into dos 6.22 with no futher changes.

again with the lack of disk drive...

I checked the 5.0 machine and I don't think it has io.sys and msdos.sys. It doesn't show up in file manager when the hidden files are shown, and under dos, I tried to change the atributes, but it said file not found. I think it might be some kind of Toshiba ms-dos if that makes a difference. I don't have a list of the hidden files that showed up on c:\ but one of them is ibmbin.(something) (thats all I can remember now).

If I copied a boot disk into c: root directory and sys the system from there, will it work like booting from a disk?

Thanks

ps.
I am assuming that if the Toshiba requires any specific components that aren't included in 6.22 I can copy them over from the original dos install...

You should have said copying the files will not work SOMETIMES. It has never failed for me when I unhid boot files and copied other boot files over them because the files I just unhid are already in the right place and are overwritten. The problem comes when you try to copy boot files to an empty drive and then hide them. In that case they do not positioned in the boot sector.
********************************************
MS-DOS uses IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS. The files you named are boot files for IBM PC DOS. Their names are IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM. They work the same way.