Hi All

I have an old laptop sat about cant remember exact spec but it is a 486 with about 24mb ram and a 1.4gb hdd.

I was wanting to put an O/S on it to mess about with but it only has a floppy drive and no usb, old type pcmcia and parallel so at the moment i cant connect one of the ext cd drives?

Any ideas, or does anyone know of a usb to parallel converter?

Thanks

Columbo1977

Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers and nobody thinks of complaining.
-Jeff Raskin-

I asume you would like dos that you can install from floppies:
FreeDOS floppy distribution: http://rugxulo.googlepages.com/

If you want something more classic:
IBM PC-DOS: ftp://ftp.boulder.ibm.com/software/dos/

or DR-DOS: http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/...

Hi,

Too bad you can't install 'MS-DOS v7.10a' from
a 'Win 98' CD! Of course, if you happen to have
it installed elsewhere (temporarily, in order
not to infringe the licensing, of course), it
should be easy enough to modify its Emergency
Boot Disk so that you can install 'MS-DOS' using
the 'Sys.COM' command, then an 'InterLnk' cable
will allow you to transfer the rest of the OS.

¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Salutations,

Michel Samson
a/s Bicéphale

to be honest I was wanting a gui type os?

Can I get one on disks other than Win 3.1?

Thanks

Columbo1977

Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers and nobody thinks of complaining.
-Jeff Raskin-

With only 24MB ram you can use Win95 and maybe Win98.

Ms-DOS and compatable have several GUI ad-ons, but multi-tasking is not a feature.

Try PuppyLinux......

do you know where to get a floppy version on puppy linux as I was looking for that?

Thanks

Columbo1977

Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers and nobody thinks of complaining.
-Jeff Raskin-

http://www.phystechsoft.com/ptsdos/...

PTS-DOS Trial Version includes Arachne Web Browser, if connect to internet could download other software....

thanks for all the replies.

I will look at that but this laptop doesnt have a ethernet or usb ports so is not on the net. I would doownload the floppies from a different computer.

Thanks

Columbo1977

Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers and nobody thinks of complaining.
-Jeff Raskin-

Do you have DOS 6.22? If you do, interlnk is your friend. Boot up 2 systems on DOS6.22, one as a slave and move anything you like across the parallel port. Only caveat is that whatever you move across must have 8.3 filenames.

Have a look at Doscore (FreeDos + Ozone GUI) at http://www.phoenixos.net.tf/
I think it's worth it!

You can probably hook up an old parallel port zip drive to the laptop. From another computer copy the contents of the win98 folder on the 98 cd to a zip disk. Then copy that disk to the laptop hard drive and run the 98 setup. You'd need to add the zip dos drivers to a 98 bootdisk in order to get things going.

This is a forum not related to Windows or Linux, any discussion about actually installing those O/Ses belongs elsewhere.....

>>>Any ideas, or does anyone know of a usb to parallel converter?<<<

Those do exist, but only to connect a parallel-port printer to a USB port on a computer; never seen one to connect a parallel port to a USB-device...

>>>to be honest I was wanting a gui type os?
Can I get one on disks other than Win 3.1?<<

There's several options for Win9x (though I have to agree, this is a DOS forum---and some of this is mentioned above):

1. Find a copy of Win95/98 on floppy. Quite difficult, hard to obtain (legally), and Win98 would be a drag on a 486-anything. Almost as difficult (1a): finding a PCMCIA CD-Rom Drive...

2. Copy CD-based install files (Win95/98 folder on CD) via parallel-port (Interlink-LPT Zip/CD) and install from HDD. Somewhat difficult, especially if you can't find drivers/devices or aren't familiar with interlink.

3. Create a spanned disk set of the CD install files zipped across several floppies and unzip to a empty directory on the laptop and (again) install from HDD. Less difficult, but tedeous and involves having many good-formatted floppies (around 24 for Win95A; >50 for Win95B and tons of them for Win95C/Win98) and knowledge of a DOS-based zip program (i.e.-PKZip). Some versions of the CD had the .cab files at 1.72MB (DMF Format) so if you had those available, you could essentially create a floppy-install set using a utility like WinImage.

4. Remove the HDD and attach to a working machine (using a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter) and copy CD install files to the laptop's HDD. Least difficult only if the drive is easily removed from the laptop and you're familiar with setting a drive up in another machine.

I urge using CD-based installation files for a HDD-style installation since using floppy-based files will cause the installation to fail (at least in Win95); the setup program is designed to look to the floppy for the files. Besides, if you had the floppy installation available, you wouldn't need to go to all the trouble...

Also, if you use an "9x Upgrade" CD, you'll have to have Win3.1 on floppy (first disk or "fake files" to upgrade to Win95; entire set for Win98).

One final note---you would likely want to keep the .cab files available on the HDD even after the installation, (i.e.--to setup internet access) since some programs (particularly Internet Explorers' connection wizard) call for them.

This is still an inappropriate thread for the MS-DOS forum, and yes I am boring but please can you all go and play in the Windows forum, thankyou....

I did that once. I used interlnk/intersrv to use a type of parallel cable as access to a fully stocked machine. It is also called direct access or direct cable something like that in Win95 and up.

You could in fact use the serial cable.

The only floppy that I know of is Netbsd anymore. I guess you could put Zipslax on it too.

I read it wrong and answer it wrong too. So get off my case you peanut.