MS DOS 6.22 Install CD
dewdude - 21-AUG-2024
dosdude@this-is-a-wendys.com


This CD will install MS DOS 6.22. Seriously. 

It's also bootable. I know right?


But seriously, bootable disc will install a MS-DOS 6.22 system with CD-ROM
drivers. Memory and driver customizations are on you.

This was developed, tested, and primarily built for 86Box. As a result, it's hardware
support is somewhat tied to it. For example, here is a list of valid SCSI cards that
this disc supports:

    [ISA16] Adaptec AHA-154xA: aspidrv
    [ISA16] Adapbec AHA-154xB: aspidrv
    [ISA16] Adaptec AHA-154xC: aspi4dos (aspidrv)
    [ISA16] Adaptec AHA-154xCF: aspi4dos (aspidrv)
    [ISA16] Adaptec AHA-145xCP: aspi4dos (aspidrv)
    [ISA16] BusLogic BT-542B: aspidrv
    [ISA16] BusLogic BT-542BH: aspidrv
    [ISA16] BusLogic BT-545S: aspidrv
    [ISA16] BusLogic BT-545C: aspidrv
    [ISA] Corel LS2000: rtaspi10.sys
    [ISA] Longshine LCS-6821N: rtaspi10.sys
    [ISA] Rancho RT1000B: rtaspi10.sys
    [ISA] Trantor T128: MA120.SYS* (Wants disc in drive at boot)
    [ISA] Trantor T130B: MA13B.SYS
    [PCI] BusLogic BT-958D: btdosm.sys
    [PCI] NCR 53c810: aspi8xx.sys
    [PCI] NCR 53c815: aspi8xx.sys
    [PCI] NCR 53c825A: aspi8xx.sys
    [PCI] NCR 53c860: aspi8xx.sys
    [PCI] NCR 53c875: aspi8xx.sys
    [PCI] Tekram DC-390: amsida.sys

This is literally every SCSI adapter in 86Box, with the exception
of the NCR 53c820; that won't work under any DOS configuration I tried.

It also supports basically every IDE controller 86Box can throw
at it.

Using This Disc:

This expects a hard drive at C after the disk initalization. If you
have more drives, that's fine. It's installing to C. 

Stick the CD in a drive you can boot from. Boot the disc. The on-screen
prompts are minimal. While the 386 prompt at the start will determine if
you skip a number of CD-ROM drivers, it's also used for EMM386 install
status. 

This system supports multiple CD-ROM drives, though it will install from
the first drive it finds the disc in. If an IDE CD-ROM drive is found, it
will ask if you want to skip scanning SCSI drivers. If you don't have any
SCSI cards, this is fine. If you booted off a SCSI CD-ROM and just happen
to have an IDE drive, you'll need to scan for SCSI.

Thanks to the use of FINDCD.EXE; I no longer have to ask you anything about
your CD-drives during boot. Got 8 of them? No problem. 

If your system absolutely cannot boot off a CD because you can't get the
SCSI card's BIOS routines to work or you're on physical hardware and can't
just swap a new one in; then a boot floppy image is provided. It is the
same boot routine used to master the El Torito boot.

While CD-Drivers are loaded post-boot using devload.com; final install will
place entries in config.sys and autoexec.bat like normal. 



Notes:

SCSI hardware (even in 86Box) is tricky. Some of these cards just didn't work
on some system configurations. 

I found it really funny the ASPILS_D.SYS driver, from Corel, for the Corel
LS2000 card....would not work with the LS2000 in 86Box. 

This entire thing started out as a joke before I found out just how bad the
actual DOS 6.22 setup program was. It actually got kicked off with a disk i
made that contained enough stuff to fdisk, format, and xcopy.

This entire thing is written in batch. Yes, batch; with help from choice;
and some other things.

Rather than just blindly loading drivers in config.sys and hoping one sticks, 
it's done in a batch script using devload. This avoids extra time during the
post fdisk reboot. It was also a necessity for installing CD-ROM drivers. The
script stops when it finds a working driver and writes it to an env variable.
Then all I have to do later is just call %sdrv% and out pops a file name.

The original driver test disk consisted of about 32 possible ASPI managers.

All of the aspi4dos.sys devices can also be run by aspidrv.sys. 

FINDCD.EXE is in fact the same one used on the Win95/NT51 boot disks. It's 
been patched to look for a file of my choosing. This was literally easier
than trying to do it any other way. 

DOS sucks. There's inconsistencies with errorlevels and virtually nothing to
give you real system information. 

Yes devload.com is from FreeDOS. No, I don't think FreeDOS is evil; I'm not 
in that game. I'm just here to do pointless stuff. But I will say I can get
MS-DOS to do a CD-ROM on an 8088; FreeDOS can't. I'm also not 100% sure if
devload was always part of freedos. I don't think it was.

The cd-rom search loads drivers in this order:

    (everybody)
    videcdd

    (386 and higher)
    aspi8xx
    btdosm
    amsida

    (everybody else)

    aspi4dos
    RT1000
    aspidrv
    ma128
    MA13B

Everyone will attempt to load the ide driver first.

If you said you had a 386 or higher, you will start at aspi8xx; these three drivers are
PCI era and crash a 286. 

The rest of the cards are from the ISA(16) era and run fine on XT/AT. 
