Document 1105
BOOTING WITH DR DOS
BPT/RR

Description:

In order to install DR DOS you must make sure that you are
booting from a floppy in drive A:. DR DOS will not install from
drive B:. DR DOS comes on 3 1/2 inch low density floppies and 5
1/4 inch Hi-density floppies. If you need 5 1/4 inch low-density
disks (360K) send in the coupon that comes with your DR DOS.

If the boot disk hangs while trying to load, usually it means
there is an incompatible or faulty piece of hardware.

One of the things it can be is simply an older floppy drive that
is out of alignment.  Sometimes the situation can be salvaged by
formatting a floppy on the boot drive with the old DOS, then
doing a diskcopy. The potential problem is that the diskcopy may
not be able to read the boot disk either. If you can't make a
backup then it may  be necessary to get a replacement disk set
from Digital Research (in case there is an actual error with the
disk, which does sometime happen) or see about getting the
drives aligned.

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Another problem is where you can make valid diskcopies but all
you get is the message "Loading...". Here the potential problem
may be the computer's bios. DR DOS must be able to direct the
system to the area where DOS Kernel files are located. Older
bioses are not able to perform this function. If your bios dates
from around 1987 or earlier you may need an update.

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And finally, if you can read the disks but are unable to format
a disk or make a diskcopy DR DOS may think you have a different
type of floppy than you actually have. Another symptom of this
is if you are making a floppy installation and DR DOS asks you
for 5 1/4" floppies when you actually have 3 1/2" floppies. If
this is an XT type computer (by which we mean it has no CMOS
configuration program) then you can place a DRIVPARM statement
in your CONFIG.SYS. Refer to the DR DOS manual to see how to use
this parameter. DRIVPARM uses no RAM. It merely updates the DR
DOS drive tables with the type drive you specify. If your
computer does have a CMOS setup program then you need to correct
the entries for your floppy drives in CMOS.
