Hey all. I'm fixing an old HP Vectra 286/12 here for a piece of equipment (with the 20mb hard drive, so it's not even an AT controller- the drives all crashed) and the software I"m trying to load seems to have an issue with the (lack) of correct extended memory manager files. The only dos on 5 1/4 floppies I have here is DR-DOS 6.0, and I think it's that version of dos that is giving me problems. The original software, I think, was written to work with MS-DOS 3.3. SO, does anyone have a disk image for MS-DOS 3.3 (I saw Ron's homepage that had ms dos 3.3.exe, but I don't think that's what I need to install DOS on a blank hard drive...right? Don't I need the disk images?) So, if anyone could correct me if I'm wrong, that would be great, and if I need the disk images.. that'd be even better ;) Thanks!

To answer part of my old question, I found "MS-DOS 3.3a" on a web page, and it consisted of two disk images. I got an image program and put them on 360k 5 1/4 floppies. The comptuer will boot from the boot disk.. but this isn't really what I need to do. I need to *install* dos onto the hard drive, and I don't see how to do that with this version of DOS. There is also "MS-DOS 3.3r" wehre noone knows what the "r" means, and those are 720K files. So I guess I need MS-DOS 3.3 *install* disks. Can anyone help? Thanks! -j

Boot with the disk you got, then format the hard drive with the /s (format c:/s) to get the c: drive bootable. Reboot to c: then type "md dos" and then copy all of the files on the disks to the dos directory. Then you need to make your autoexec.bat and config.sys and you are good to go.

Not even necessary to format the hard drive if it's been done already - type and enter: sys c: after booting from the system floppy, and then copy command.com from a: to c:\ (old versions wouldn't do this automatically) Many computer companies (back then) would release their own proprietary version of DOS - probably what the 'r' refers to. You won't be able to use emm386 on a 286! By definition, it only functions on 386 machines and higher. You may be able to use himem.sys to load DOS 'high' - but this can be tricky on the old machines, might require some experimenting with the "machine" parameter. Any version of MS-DOS should work on any Intel based PC - early versions were pretty limited. DR DOS should work too - might need to be setup properly, is all. Good luck, this all sounds like new territory for you. ;-)

Versions of MS-DOS before 4 did not have Setup or Install programs! You were left to do that yourself. Mike & jboy are on the right track.

Hey guys- First, thanks! Yes, I understand all of this (I needed that sys c: command, that's what was stopping me). No problem with the dos part.. severe problems with the EMM386 stuff. Supposedly, you CAN run this on the 286/12 HP vectra, with an additional HPEMM386.sys utility... now if only the hp setup diskette would recognize the computer.. this is such a nightmare! There is a read.me file that explains how to add HPEMM386 into the config.sys to work *with* the dos emm386 file, but it only gives solutions for dos 3.3 and 4.xx, with special specific instructions for the 286 machine. MY dos 3.3a that I got from that webite didn't even HAVE a EMM388 file of any kind.. I'm wondering if it was incomplete. Next, I'm going to try to find dos 4.xx so at least I can follow the special HP directions. I have dos 5.0 on there now. Step 2: try and pull the motor/bearings out of this (working) hard drive and replace the (broken, but last seen with working software) ones in the bad drive. It made a godawful grinding noise, while still actually functioning, so the media may still be okay. Step 3: find and buy a 386 computer with an OLD style ISA bus and figure out how to re-install all of the boards. As you can see, this has been quite an adventure for me. I wouldn't have been able to even start without all the valuable DOS information I've found on the web, especially on here! I've never typed format c: /x so many times before.... the only other people I know that have had the problem we have are in Japan (they have the same type of thin film diamond growth system), they seem to be running "nwDOS" on a homemade special bus PC.. I find out that perhaps nwDOS is an old version of DR-DOS.. this is the closest I can get to machine-specific help! -Jenny

Thanks for checking my home page Jennifer but it was'nt asking you for an blank hard disk,it was asking you for a blank disk a so then you will get msdos 3.3 install on your disk a: disk.