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Loading MS-DOS 3.3 on Compaq Portable III instead of keeping Compaq's DOS 3.31

R

RizThomas

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 2, 2012
Messages
198
Location
Surrey,BC,Canada
Hello,

I just got lucky picking up a Compaq Portable III (includes the expansion pack) last week for (I think) is a reasonable price ($30 CDN). Aside from a disintegrating keyboard cable insulators, the unit boots up from its built-in 20MB drive. It boots up on Compaq DOS 3.31 but to my dismay, the whole DOS directory is gone. Therefore, I can not create new System Disks.
However, I was able to boot from a MS-DOS 3.30 (which I have in floppies). Before I take a drastic move, may I ask the community's opinion as to whether it is a wise move to just forget the DOS3.31 and use the MS-DOS instead. I can then re-build the 20MB Drive which seems to have errors (not even sure if I can copy anything to it as it comes up with errors).

I found Compaq DOS3.31 in .img format which I need to write them back to the 5.25" floppies for the COMPAQ's floppy drive to read. I haven't found a way to do this yet.

Thanks
Rizal
 
RizThomas said:
I found Compaq DOS3.31 in .img format which I need to write them back to the 5.25" floppies for the COMPAQ's floppy drive to read. I haven't found a way to do this yet.Rizal
Click to expand...

Personally I think it is always better to reformat and not use whatever comes with a computer when you get it, unless it has historical interest which can't be regenerated. You should probably do a llf anyway as that is part of the regular maintenance on these drives.

Compaq DOS 3.31 is what would have come with the machine in 1987 so that sounds good. I don't know what problem you have with 5.25" floppies. Is it because you don't have another computer with a suitable drive? If that is the case I really recommend you get a junky P1 or other old freebie and set it up as a "tweener" because you will run into this problem over and over when you play with old kit.

Nice machine! BTW, I see you can get the diagnostics disks here: http://oldcomputers.net/compaqiii.html
 
What other directories are on the drive? View the autoexec.bat and config.sys files and see what they point too. The files you are looking for may well be somewhere else on the drive.
 
RizThomas said:
I found Compaq DOS3.31 in .img format which I need to write them back to the 5.25" floppies for the COMPAQ's floppy drive to read. I haven't found a way to do this yet.
Click to expand...
You can use RawWrite for Windows (or your favorite disk imaging program) to write the .IMA image to the disk.
 
Thank you all for the quick response.
1. Yes..going to try to undelete the files. Wow..those were moons ago..need to dig up how I did it years ago.
2. I have some older PC units ranging from Dell 386 to 486 to Pentium class. I should be able to write those image files to 5.25 disks which I have in abundance (still)

Again, thank you all....need to refresh my brain on DOS again...cheers
 
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