Mike's PCjr Page

Brutman wrote:PC DOS 3.3 came on a two disk set. Making bootable diskettes from that is fairly easy - boot the machine, and format a new diskette using the /s parameter.

PC DOS 5 is a lot bigger and needs to be patched to run on the PCjr. I've sent out images and physical copies of a working boot disk to get people started. You need about two diskettes to get all of the good utilities. And you only need one or two diskettes to get a hard drive installed.

Aside from your machine having a 720KB floppy, what boot disk modifications do you need that others would find useful? I have a small library of boot disks here, but most of them are tailored to a specific device that I want to test. There is very little variation in the DOS being used; it is mostly a matter of changes to CONFIG.SYS.

You pretty much just asked me what I was attempting to ask you, haha.

My problem isn't really what extra to include. I was just thinking I would include jrconfig.sys and let people sort out the config.sys changes for themselves. The real problem is that the two disks for Compaq DOS 3.31 have more than 720kb total in files, so I wouldn't be able to copy everything onto two 360kb images. If you think most people would be fine with just having the files that are common to other versions of DOS (like the MS-DOS 3.3 disk set that I have), I'll probably just copy those. To make a boot disk that's fairly usable by itself, though, would require quite a bit more review.

EDIT: Okay, the big additions to Compaq DOS are an enhanced disk driver, a clock driver, and Compaq's own installation program. If I ignore Compaq's installation program and the clock driver, I can fit pretty much everything on the two disks, except DISPLAY.SYS, which was the file I chose to leave out because it requires an EGA display. By that same logic, I'm also wondering if I should leave out EGA.CPI. There would be some extra room on the second disk, in that case.

I was able to find a copy of DOS 3.3. Somewhere in my storage locker is a copy of IBM PC DOS 5.0 but since I specifically ordered a 32 MB DOM so I could run DOS 3.3 without wasting space. 32 MB Doms are about $12 so how can I go wrong. I have about 15-20 MB of DOS programs at most. That leaves me space even if I add a another Sierra game or two. Right now the jrIDE is hooked up Maxtor 4.3 GB. I have one 32 MB partition set up on it.

Networking is the next step. The NAS I am running at work still supports Netbeui so I should be able to install the Microsoft Client on the PCjr and access the network. The Rapport parallel port , I assume, is not bi-directional and I have seen anywhere instruction for making it so. Adding a second modified parallel port is an option, either as LPT2, or as LPT1 and then moving the Rapport to LPT2.