How to "boot" MS-DOS 1.25?

Sebastian_L

Hello,

I am pretty new to the MS-DOS.

So I tried MS-DOS 1.25 [CDP OEM R2.11] (5.25-320k).
(https://winworldpc.com/download/c38ac396-c2a7-6f3c-e280-9e11c3a4c2a8)

I am using DOSBox and can navigate to the folders. But I can't boot it. Or was it more you put the disk in the drive and navigate to basica or so?

It started in the manual with entering time and date.

Could someone please help me.

Thank you in advance.
Sebastian

SomeGuy

You might need to use a different emulator. I don't know the stats of current DOSBox, but some emulators have issues with DOS 1.x disks.

Specifically, some emulators won't boot a floppy if a "55 AA" signature is missing from the boot sector - DOS 1.x does not have that, that was added in 2.x but only meant for hard drives, not floppies. Technically, that is an emulator bug, although some real hardware did the same thing. In some cases, you might be able to hex edit the boot sector to manually add that signature.

Second, some emulators may not like 160k/180k/320k floppy disk images.

On a real computer, the way it works is you simply put the floppy disk in drive A: and turn on the computer. DOS will boot and ask for time/date or run through commands specified in autoexec.bat.

Sebastian_L

Thank you for your answer.
But what is the best way to expierence ms dos without the original Hardware?

rliegh

I would use 86box, myself: http://86box.net/

Get a version, install the roms, and when it boots (by default it starts up as an original ibm pc -which is perfect for dos 1) add a copy of the DOS 1 image into the drive A slot.

Any time I make a new 86box machine, the first things I do are click "resizable window" and "remember window size and position" under the view menu -it's not necessary, but it makes it nicer.

tarlabnor

Here's the MS-DOS 1.25 [CDP OEM R2.11] running on emulated Columbia Data Products MPC-1600 (8088) machine:

Sebastian_L

Thank you now is it running!