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Trying to install MS-DOS on a IBM PS/2 30-286

F

Fizz

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Apr 11, 2022
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13
Location
Australia, victoria
Hello!

i recently got an old IBM PS/2 30-286 its fully working and boots into the starter program

i want to install dos on it but im having a lot of troubble, it has a scuzi hard drive installed by the guy i got it from that is recognised on start up
ive downloaded a few drfrent floppy disk writing programs but they all have issues, i have tried many MS-DOS images and put them into the software, RawWrite and Power ISO will both write to the disk with no errors but when i try to boot from it on the PC it will have issues reading from it, wont read it or one time i got it to boot but the MS-DOS installer couldn't coppy a lot of the files, and win image will throw a lot of sector errors when writing and the same thing happens as before.

this is my frist time using vintage computers and trying to install things onto them so any advice or help is greately apreciated
if you know what software to use or what images i should try it would be a great help
 
If you are getting sector errors with winimage, then your floppys are defective. Or your drive needs a head clean. I've found that most of my 1.44MB floppys have bad sectors. I remember once i had to go thru like 15-20 disks to find a perfect one. Eventually bough a gotec, but that wont help you with a PS/2.

If you haven't got any disks without bad sectors, if you can somehow format a disk on another system it will mask the bad sectors. You can then make the disk bootable, with the SYS A: command. Put the disk in the PS/2 and then do SYS C:. This will get you a bootable HDD.

Writing an image requires that there are 0 bad sectors.
 
Alternately, if writing out the disks *IS* error-free but reading it on the PS/2 isn't working reliably, PS/2 drives are known for capacitor issues and the drive will need maintenance and they will cause no-boot or read errors.
 
mR_Slug said:
If you are getting sector errors with winimage, then your floppys are defective. Or your drive needs a head clean. I've found that most of my 1.44MB floppys have bad sectors. I remember once i had to go thru like 15-20 disks to find a perfect one. Eventually bough a gotec, but that wont help you with a PS/2.

If you haven't got any disks without bad sectors, if you can somehow format a disk on another system it will mask the bad sectors. You can then make the disk bootable, with the SYS A: command. Put the disk in the PS/2 and then do SYS C:. This will get you a bootable HDD.

Writing an image requires that there are 0 bad sectors.
Click to expand...
Thankyou for the advice

i will try to format the disk on another pc, is there an os you recomend to be running, other that windows 10?
also i have been able to sucsesfully write one image to the disk and that was the IBM starter disk, and the computer will boot from that

ill let you know how it goes

thanks!
 
Sys command only works in DOS/Win9x. Later OS allow you to format a MSDOS (bootable floppy) but include a bunch of crap that takes up space on the disk.
 
Extended Attributes aint that large...

Just don't read disks with them on a win9x system thats all ;)
 
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Fizz said:
Hello!

i recently got an old IBM PS/2 30-286 its fully working and boots into the starter program

i want to install dos on it but im having a lot of troubble, it has a scuzi hard drive installed by the guy i got it from that is recognised on start up
ive downloaded a few drfrent floppy disk writing programs but they all have issues, i have tried many MS-DOS images and put them into the software, RawWrite and Power ISO will both write to the disk with no errors but when i try to boot from it on the PC it will have issues reading from it, wont read it or one time i got it to boot but the MS-DOS installer couldn't coppy a lot of the files, and win image will throw a lot of sector errors when writing and the same thing happens as before.

this is my frist time using vintage computers and trying to install things onto them so any advice or help is greately apreciated
if you know what software to use or what images i should try it would be
Click to expand...
I have orderd some more disks of ebay
hopefully that fixes it
if anyone has any recomendations to software that works on windows 10 or working MS-DOS images it would be of great help

thank you for all the suggestions
 
As mentioned the drives are terrible. It could be marginal now and probably will fail at some point. However If one disk without bad sectors works, it looks like the drive is operational.

I use WinImage. I don't know if it works on 10 though.
 
PC/MS Dos 4 never really got any rave reviews. The damage had been done by the time version 4.01 was released

PC Dos 5.02 maybe?. It and MS Dos 5.0a fix a few hick ups in the original PC/MS Dos release I believe. IMG_20220413_085853.jpg
 

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It appears I do have a number of sealed, new in the box retail copies of PC Dos 5.02

Not knowing the location of the OP makes it a bit hard to determine the shipping/postage costs to that destination though.IMG_20220413_091153.jpg
 
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IBM OS/2 1.3 Extended Edition will also run on the PS/2 30 286 which low and behold I has a boxed retail version of that. But going by my many previous attempts at installing OS/2 v3 Warp from 3.5" floppy disks it is more than likely the second to last installation disk is corrupt ;)IMG_20220413_095416.jpg
 
mR_Slug said:
I use WinImage. I don't know if it works on 10 though.
Click to expand...
I use WinImage (as administrator) on my WIN10 computer, using an external USB 3.5" drive.
Any operation involving formatting (e.g. 'Format', 'Format and write disk') is problematic.
Errors such as 'The current image format is not supported by the disk drive', and failing verification.

720K and 1.44M diskettes.

A Sony model MPF82E-U1 and a Teac FD-05PUB.

What works reliably for me is formatting the diskette in a command window, closing the command window, then using the 'Write disk' operation of WinImage.
 
Just before we go too far off on a tangent here...
Fizz, it does not matter which version of DOS you use. MS-DOS and PC-DOS will work. Both are bootable on the PS/2.
 
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