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Microsoft MS-DOS 6.22 on the HP Pavilion zt1135


ppgrainbow

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Hello! :hello:

One of my sisters gave me their old notebook computer for my 40th birthday. It's a HP Pavilion ZT1135.

 

It has no working built-in networking capabilities and recently, the old hard Toshiba 40 GB IDE hard drive was replaced with a Transcend 8 GB 2.5" PATA SLC Industrial SSD (model number TS8GSSD25-S) as I was previously unable to use it for over a year.

Looking into the information from Navratil System Info, the Transcend 8 GB 2.5" PATA SLC Industrial SSD has a actual fixed disk capacity of 7.45 GB. This drive is limited to 300,000 writes per single level cell memory (512-byte sector) for a total of drive life of writing up to 2.13 PB of data.

Here's what I have installed so far:

 

1. I managed to install Microsoft MS-DOS 6.22 using the USB 2.0 compatible floppy disk as well as Windows 3.1 without problems and I disabled the Windows swapfile. By disabling the Windows swapfile, you CANNOT install Win32s. I managed to install 4DOS without too much of a problem, but I managed to disable swapfile support also.

 

The notebook has 256 MB of memory with 248 MB is usable, 8 MB is reserved for video memory. The notebook PC has a integrated S3 Twister 86C380 graphics chip with 7 MB of video memory.

MS-DOS 6.22 can only recognise up to 64 MB of memory and only supports the 16-bit FAT file system which limits the size of the partition to 2 GB (up to 65,505 clusters at 32 KB per cluster and 64 sectors per cluster). Currently, I have the drive split up into four partitions:

2. Drive C: (primary partition): 1,474.47 MB with 49.63 MB (or 3.37%) of disk space used
3. The extended partition occupies a total of 6,141.09 MB. Drives D, E and F all have 2,047.03 MB with drive F using 40.25 MB (or 1.96%) of disk space. Drives D and E have not been used yet.

Overall, out of the total 7,615.56 MB capacity, MS-DOS 6.22 is using only 89.88 MB or just 1.18% of the total disk space. This may sound too much and too good to be true for a tiny 21-year old operating system.

However, MS-DOS 5 through 6.22 alone may not understand how a SSD functions and I have concerns over possible data corruption.

Also, is it possible to use USB support and PCMCIA drivers under MS-DOS and Windows 3.1? The notebook has two PCMCIA slots that were made by ENE Technology Inc. Under Windows 3.1, the OS doesn't even detect the USB floppy drive at all. Windows File Manager displays drives C, D, E, F and X.

Do you have any idea what can be done to reduce data corruption under MS-DOS when run on a SSD? Also, how can I get Windows 3.1 to detect the USB floppy drive when MS-DOS does?

Edited by ppgrainbow
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Do you have any idea what can be done to reduce data corruption under MS-DOS when run on a SSD?

You don't need to do anything special, because there's no risk of data corruption at all: the Transcend 2.5" PATA SLC Industrial SSDs do emulate IDE disks quite perfectly.

That said, I personally think you should use MS-DOS 7.10 instead of 6.22, because then you can use FAT-32, though. But this has nothing to do with any data corruption.

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About USB support you might want to try the drivers in this floppy disk:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/141875-how-to-install-dos-usb-drivers/

Thanks to the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150508185242/http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/usbdrv.html

 

jaclaz

 

Thank you!

 

I found some success if I load USBAHCI.SYS and DI1000DD.SYS in the CONFIG.SYS. I will be asked to connect any USB devices that I have installed and it will go from there. :)

Edited by ppgrainbow
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I found some success if I load USBAHCI.SYS and DI1000DD.SYS in the CONFIG.SYS. I will be asked to connect any USB devices that I have installed and it will go from there. :)

 

USBAHCI.SYS ??? You mean USBASPI.SYS or ASPIEHCI.SYS ?  :dubbio:

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Do you have any idea what can be done to reduce data corruption under MS-DOS when run on a SSD?

You don't need to do anything special, because there's no risk of data corruption at all: the Transcend 2.5" PATA SLC Industrial SSDs do emulate IDE disks quite perfectly.

That said, I personally think you should use MS-DOS 7.10 instead of 6.22, because then you can use FAT-32, though. But this has nothing to do with any data corruption.

 

 

Thank you for the suggest. I'll be sticking with MS-DOS 6.22 for now.

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I found some success if I load USBAHCI.SYS and DI1000DD.SYS in the CONFIG.SYS. I will be asked to connect any USB devices that I have installed and it will go from there. :)

 

USBAHCI.SYS ??? You mean USBASPI.SYS or ASPIEHCI.SYS ?  :dubbio:

 

 

Yes, I meant USBASPI.SYS not USBAHCI.SYS. Sorry for the typo.

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As a side note, in the good ol' times I had (I actually still have it and it still works fine, or at lest did last time I happened to use it) a very clever device (made by Archos) which doubled as CD player (with earplugs) and as CD Data reader sporting a short cable and a PCMCIA card (that could be inserted when not in use in a recess of the player itself) powered by a few rechargeable batteries.

 

The drivers for the PCMCIA were on floppy and could be installed to DOS/Win3.x/Windows easily.

 

Finding today PCMCIA cards might be difficult though, and you should make VERY sure that what you have is actually PCMCIA and NOT CardBus (and anyway check the exact version/voltage) there is a lot of confusion on those cards, JFYI:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/141776-modifying-a-really-old-dell-laptop/

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/141776-modifying-a-really-old-dell-laptop/#entry907932

 

jaclaz

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As a side note, in the good ol' times I had (I actually still have it and it still works fine, or at lest did last time I happened to use it) a very clever device (made by Archos) which doubled as CD player (with earplugs) and as CD Data reader sporting a short cable and a PCMCIA card (that could be inserted when not in use in a recess of the player itself) powered by a few rechargeable batteries.

 

The drivers for the PCMCIA were on floppy and could be installed to DOS/Win3.x/Windows easily.

 

Finding today PCMCIA cards might be difficult though, and you should make VERY sure that what you have is actually PCMCIA and NOT CardBus (and anyway check the exact version/voltage) there is a lot of confusion on those cards, JFYI:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/141776-modifying-a-really-old-dell-laptop/

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/141776-modifying-a-really-old-dell-laptop/#entry907932

 

jaclaz

 

Thanks for the heads up. Users who try to run MS-DOS or FreeDOS on modern laptops might not be lucky as most vendors have dropped support for it.

 

I tried to install the Phoenix Card Services via Windows 3.1 and only got a Divide Overflow when attempting to detect PCMCIA cards in the CONFIG.SYS file. :(

 

I'll try to do some research on how to get PCMCIA drivers working under MS-DOS or FreeDOS.

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Well...under MS-DOS 6.22, I've started to experience some data corruption and I had to start over.

 

Only this time around, here's what I had to do:

 

1. I had to format the SSD as FAT32 at 4 KB clusters as opposed to 32 KB.

2. I had to install MS-DOS 7.1 (Windows 95B) including the files as well as Windows 3.1.

3. To get Windows 3.1 working under MS-DOS 7.1, I had to install 3xSTART to allow patching the IO.SYS file to allow Windows 3.x to run under MS-DOS 7.1.

 

In order to get the USB floppy drive recognised under Windows 3.1, I had to install GRUB4DOS via the bootlace 0x80 --force-backup-mbr --time-out=0, because the HP Pavilion zt1135 does not allow booting USB devices as it was not available at the time when it was released.

 

To get the USB floppy drive recognised under Windows 3,1 I then had to edit the MENU.LST file and enter these parameters:

title Microsoft MS-DOS 7.1\nfind --set-root /io.sysmap --floppies=1chainloader /io.sys +1

By starting MS-DOS 7.1 under GRUB4DOS, it will find the IO.SYS on the root device, map one floppy disk drive and chainload the IO.SYS. Windows 3.1 now properly recognises the USB floppy drive A! :)

 

I will tweak around the MENU.LST entries later on and see how things go from here.

 

By the way, are there any universal sound drivers that will work under MS-DOS 7.1 on the Pavilion ZT1135? I'm curious to ask...

Edited by ppgrainbow
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Well, what I *meant* was the Partition Size limitations you indicated.

 

Ennyhoo, have fun! :thumbup

 

Thank you! ^^

 

I do have some issues that may eventually be never addressed.

 

1. The onboard sound card is a VIA VT82C686A/C AC'97 Audio Controller. I'm only using DOSSOUND to play very limited WAV and MIDI files and I don't know if it's possible to use it to emulate the features of Sound Blaster 16 or not. If you have found any generic drivers for it, let me know.

 

2. There are two PCMCIA/Cardbus slots that were made by ENE Technology Inc. I don't know the exact model number of the PCMCIA card, but are there any generic PCMCIA/Cardbus drivers for MS-DOS/PC-DOS/FreeDOS or not?

 

3. I can't seem to get the USB mouse to work under MS-DOS as the BIOS has limited USB support and that it lacks booting from USB...so, I have to use the touchpad and the buttons. Is there a way to work around this issue?

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