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MS-DOS memory limits?

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kb2syd

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I have an older P4 computer with an ISA slot. I was going to use this as a tweener to test some things. However, when I try to boot DOS from CD it just resets with no output and starts boot over again.

The computer has 512 Meg installed. Will this much installed memory cause this type of behavior? I kind of recall that it could.

I can boot DBAN, I can boot free dos. I was kind of hoping for the real thing. Any thoughts?
 
That amount of memory should be fine for DOS, as well as Windows 95/98.

What version of MS-DOS are you trying to boot? Are you loading any drivers on the image? What software did you use to make the bootable CD ISO image? Or are you using an existing ISO image from somewhere?

It could be some issue with the CD-booting ability. You should try booting from a normal floppy drive instead. Hopefully you are at least using re-writable CDs, as this sort of thing can take much trial and error. You should consider using the "MS-DOS 7.1" DOS files that came with Windows 95 OSR2 or 98, as this will give you access to FAT32 drivers.
 
The DOS 6 HIMEM will only use up to 64 MB available but could load on systems with more memory. There might be a different incompatibility. Maybe try a DOS 7 (Win 9x) boot disk; there were updates to Win9x through the period of the Pentium IV.
 
I used the 6.22 CD boot from allbootdisks. I was really hoping for 6.22. Oh well. I'll have to get an older machine running to make a dos boot disk. All my originals have become corrupted over time so all I have right now is disk images. Any other thoughts on this anyone?
 
I have found references to people running DOS 6.22 on a Pentium 4 (2 GHz) with 512 MB of RAM. You didn't mention the specific system so no chance on verifying chipset which is where I expect the problem to be. Pentium 4 was a low point for Intel chipsets with some having poor backward compatibility.
 
I boot DOS 6.22 via USB flash drive using my P4 3 Ghz and 2 Gig ram with no problems, Abit IC7-Max3 Mobo
 
Well, the thing is DOS 6.22 by itself SHOULD work, but random disk images from the internet may have extra stuff on them that is not compatible. Most likely they may try to load a CD-ROM driver that is not compatible with your machine.

If DOS 6.22 at least gets to the "starting MS-DOS..." message, try pressing F8 right after that message appears and see if you can bypass anything that it is loading.

Just to get things started out, you might want to try the custom built "MS-DOS 7.1 CDU" ISO CD image on Winworld. A lot of people find that helpful to get a DOS based system up and running. It includes the MS-DOS components from Windows 98 and some DOS utilities. Once you get things up and running, then you can transfer/write additional disk images and configure it however you want.
 
SomeGuy said:
Well, the thing is DOS 6.22 by itself SHOULD work, but random disk images from the internet may have extra stuff on them that is not compatible. Most likely they may try to load a CD-ROM driver that is not compatible with your machine.
Click to expand...

allbootdisks is not some random site. It's been around for years. They go back to 2003 in the wayback machine. There's no extra stuff on the disk. Just boots dos with a CD driver. If you're going to make broad statements like that do some research.

SomeGuy said:
If DOS 6.22 at least gets to the "starting MS-DOS..." message, try pressing F8 right after that message appears and see if you can bypass anything that it is loading.
Click to expand...

It never even gets that far. I was just trying to verify that there isn't some memory limit. It gets past post, accesses the CD drive then reboots. The same combination will boot other boot CDs so it's not the drive.

SomeGuy said:
Just to get things started out, you might want to try the custom built "MS-DOS 7.1 CDU" ISO CD image on Winworld. A lot of people find that helpful to get a DOS based system up and running. It includes the MS-DOS components from Windows 98 and some DOS utilities. Once you get things up and running, then you can transfer/write additional disk images and configure it however you want.
Click to expand...

Wait, really...
Don't download some random image, but use this random image.

I'll just re-create boot floppies from my images here, or create a boot usb from my disk1.imd and see if I can get that to work.
 
Last edited:
Timo W. said:
That is most likely your problem. DOS was never released on a bootable CD - these are custom-made by whomever.

MS-DOS 6.22 runs totally fine on a P4.
Click to expand...

I've used this image for years on slightly older machines. That's not the problem...
 
kb2syd said:
How did you create the USB image?
Click to expand...

I just partition and format the flash drive making sure the partition is made active, For this i use " Active @ Partition Manager " Free, In Windows XP.
Then leaving the flash drive plugged in i Re-boot into the Bios and set the First hard drive as the Flash drive and the Floppy drive as the first drive to boot from, Then just Re-boot and install DOS 6.22 from the install disks.

Another way i use is to do everything from within Windows XP, Partition / Format and install just the DOS 6.22 files i need but the above steps is probably the easiest. I usually use a Flash drive of 2 Gig or less.
 
kb2syd said:
I've used this image for years on slightly older machines. That's not the problem...
Click to expand...
You are not proving anything with that statement. No one said the image does not work at all.

Again, that CD image is completely custom-made. You have not even said why you are not simply going to download the disk images from the original MS-DOS 6.22, write them to floppy disk and just use these. Instead, you resist on relying on some ISO image of DOS, because you used it in the past on older machines.

Also, SomeGuy is correct. There are plenty of IDE CD-ROM drivers and some fail on newer systems. That's why there is more than one CD-ROM driver at all. On that CD, however, you have no choice of what it loads. You have to take what the maker of that CD thought is best for all...

If you want help: ditch that CD and boot MS-DOS from floppy disk. Easy enough.
 
Timo W. said:
You are not proving anything with that statement. No one said the image does not work at all.

Again, that CD image is completely custom-made. You have not even said why you are not simply going to download the disk images from the original MS-DOS 6.22, write them to floppy disk and just use these. Instead, you resist on relying on some ISO image of DOS, because you used it in the past on older machines.

Also, SomeGuy is correct. There are plenty of IDE CD-ROM drivers and some fail on newer systems. That's why there is more than one CD-ROM driver at all. On that CD, however, you have no choice of what it loads. You have to take what the maker of that CD thought is best for all...

If you want help: ditch that CD and boot MS-DOS from floppy disk. Easy enough.
Click to expand...

I did say I didn't have equipment set up to at the time to make images.See #4 above.

I wasn't asking for help troubleshooting booting MS-DOS from diskette. I wanted to know if there was memory limit before I went further creating the boot disks since I wasn't currently set up.

I got the help I needed. Knowing there wasn't a memory limit enabled me to make it work by taking a different approach.

Knowing USB booting was working for others I explored that.

I dumped the image of that CD to a USB and it booted.

The same image now boots from USB, safely loads the default CD-ROM driver and all is good.

Now, I'm going to use that setup to make the diskette images I need so I can get a clean default install.
 
Finally able to create 6.22 MS-DOS diskettes by booting off USB. I now have a full install running on a 1GB CF I had laying around.

Now I can test the floppy drives I needed to test in the first place.
 
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