It turns out that the INSTALL disk (or SETUP disk if you are using a different source) really doesn't like the VMware IDE hard drive emulation.
If you use that, the installation floppy's boot code simply ends up rebooting infinitely.
If you try a SCSI HD instead, you will go through all the (quite horrible) installtion process only to find that in the end the MS-DOS 4 SCSI driver installed on the HD doesn't play well - executing 'illegal' SCSI instructions, or something.
In the end I started from scratch and used the VMware SATA HD emulation: Pay dirt! The installation process worked, and I could finally boot into a HD-based full installation of MS-DOS 4.0. What a rigmarole!
I would remind anyone trying to run this of a few things. 1: MS-DOS 4.0 was so buggy that it taught a lot of people to never trust a "X.0" release. 2: It had so many issues, a lot of people stayed with 3.x until after the release of MS-DOS 5.0. So if you have problems, you would not be the only one.
Microsoft MS-DOS 4.01 (3.5-720k) dump is broken. The SETUP and OPERATING disk are the same thing. Hopefully this can be redumped since its otherwise not usable.
EDIT: The installer makes a copy of the INSTALL disk, and I accidently overwrote the Operating Disk because there's no safeguard. Ugh.
What's interesting about Compaq v4.01D is that the included jpg's of the box and manual indicate that it includes FASTART but the diskette images do not. Not sure why the discrepancy. Downloaded as many disk images as I could find for version 4, and none of the 360KB and 1440KB images had it, but a 720 image did, although the dates were 5/8/1990, same as vers3.31. I'll keep looking.
I compared uploaded Microsoft MS-DOS 4.01 (4-7-1989) (3.5-720k) with mine. At least uploaded one seems not to be dumped from original Microsoft Genuine.
When I run the Microsoft MS-DOS 4.01 (4-7-1989) (3.5-720k), I get the prompt to insert Install disk. But shouldn't I get the prompt to create the install disk? It seems like it has saved that the install disk is already created. Anyone have any idea on how to get it to prompt me to create the disk?
The download called "Microsoft MS-DOS 4.01 (4-7-1989) (3.5-720k)" does NOT work in VMware, it gives you a 50/50 of giving you either the CLIENT MAC ADDRESS error or another crash message i'm not going to bother typing out.
Comments
This was fun (not) to install under VMware.
It turns out that the INSTALL disk (or SETUP disk if you are using a different source) really doesn't like the VMware IDE hard drive emulation.
If you use that, the installation floppy's boot code simply ends up rebooting infinitely.
If you try a SCSI HD instead, you will go through all the (quite horrible) installtion process only to find that in the end the MS-DOS 4 SCSI driver installed on the HD doesn't play well - executing 'illegal' SCSI instructions, or something.
In the end I started from scratch and used the VMware SATA HD emulation: Pay dirt! The installation process worked, and I could finally boot into a HD-based full installation of MS-DOS 4.0. What a rigmarole!
@BigAlUK Brilliant! Thanks for the comment, I had the same issue.
@JoeSzup Your welcome
I would remind anyone trying to run this of a few things. 1: MS-DOS 4.0 was so buggy that it taught a lot of people to never trust a "X.0" release. 2: It had so many issues, a lot of people stayed with 3.x until after the release of MS-DOS 5.0. So if you have problems, you would not be the only one.
Microsoft MS-DOS 4.01 (3.5-720k) dump is broken. The SETUP and OPERATING disk are the same thing. Hopefully this can be redumped since its otherwise not usable.
EDIT: The installer makes a copy of the INSTALL disk, and I accidently overwrote the Operating Disk because there's no safeguard. Ugh.
If so, can someone please contribute it?
But it is very hard to get it as 3.5" media except 4.01C