FreeDOS - how i installed FreeDOS 1.0 with only a few floppy disks and a usb drive.

Installing FreeDOS normally is quite easy compared to MS-DOS. just insert the live CD and for the most part just follow the on-screen instructions.

But i had a problem a few years back when i decided to install freedos on my IBM Thinkpad 600E with its 400Mhz P2 and 224MB ram. The dvd drive was as dead as a doorknob.

But somehow i did it. and how i did starts with a special FreeDOS floppy i put together.


Ram disk, floppy disk.

Once upon a time, that thinkpad had windows 2000 on it. with an NTFS partition. so i wasn't exactly in a good place to actually setup freedos on it.

What i ended up doing at first is i took SRDISK and unzip and a freedos boot floppy to make a basic ramdisk of a very minimal freedos setup. (this is important later)

This ramdisk, once booted, is crazy-fast. and most importantly i can swap the floppy disk while its running. and even load extra zip archives off floppy disks into the ramdisk.

What this has to do with installing freedos.

So, with the help of my trusty ramdisk floppy, when i went to install freedos, i did the formatting, set aside an extra partition for a second os if needed, and installed a bootloader.

Problem: how am i supposed to get the utilities and such on this thing?
This computer only has a hard drive and a floppy drive to boot from. and out of the box that's all FreeDOS off a floppy disk sees, but it /does/ have a single usb port.

So. i took the packages off the freedos 1.0 iso and bundled then into 1 zipped filetree along with some other things, and put them on a usb drive. One floppy disk with usb drivers later and i copied the zip into ram. extract it to the freedos partition and after some tweaking everything went smoothly from there.

The ramdisk might not have been necessary, but i had already made it a bit before deciding to install freedos on that thinkpad, so i figured having a bit of extra workspace would help. 

old tech - 1980s sounddesign 4-in-one stereo

digital composite of both photos shown below.

1988 soundesign dual deck stereo, with AM, FM, 8-track, dual cassette, and an alarm clock.


status:

• cassette deck: needs belts, right channel is a bit noisy.
• 8-track: working
• clock: working
• AM/FM tuner: working. indicator seems to need a bulb.
• visualizer: left visualizer needs a bulb

found: at a thrift shop.
main usage: drive 4 8-ohm speakers in a 2-channel, stereo-surround arrangement, connected to a laptop via a 3.5mm to RCA adapter cable.

description: This monster of a stereo makes the modern laptop its used with look puny in comparison. Its not a top-of-the-line unit, but it does get the job done, and definitely has enough chrome.

no flash, yes i know the tuner and left visualizer need bulbs.

with flash.

Old Tech: IBM thinkpad 600E

Specs:

397Mhz Mobile Pentium II Processor
224MB RAM
2.5MB MagicMedia graphics.
1024x768 TFT screen at 24bit color.
6GB HDD
1.44MB Floppy Disk Drive
PCMCIA CD-ROM drive
PCMCIA Ethernet networking
(working in Linux and FreeDOS)
Sound Blaster Pro II emulation
tri-booting:

• Linux
• FreeDOS
• KolibriOS

Overview: 

My old IBM Thinkpad 600E, what a machine.  Not even close to enough power to do things like youtube and such, but as far as FreeDOS and KolibriOS are concerned, its quite well, overpowered. having around 200MB XMS memory in dos is a bit excessive, yes it has a ramdisk for temp files. and as far as kolibriOS, goes, givin that that OS can run on a Pentium I with MMS, and 8MB RAM, This old laptop is naturally quite suited for it.

As far as dos GUIs go, it blazes through the likes of SEAL 2 and the far less developed OZONE, oddly, only one DOS gui i tried had trouble, ill give you a hint it starts with "W" :p

With games, it has the usual selection of Apogee shareware, and also games like Duke Nukem 3D, the DOS version of Transport Tycoon Delux, and a selection of many other games.

And like any avid DOS user there are various other programs too: such as The Links web browser (just about the only graphical DOS browser that still gets updated),  some media players, such as an Allegro+VESA port of MPLAYER, and yes, it can just barely play a 320x240 OGG Theora Voribis Video. pausing slightly when the buffer runs out.

To conclude, its not the most capable computer, but it does work, and still manages to out-preform DOSBOX.