about to do the unthinkable....

rookworm · 10-26-2005, 04:34 AM

I have a partitioned hard drive with linux on one parition, and fat16 on another (must be so for my laptop's hibernation file). I was just idly thinking to my self, when an evil idea came upon me: what if I were to install Ms-dos on it and use it to play old games (it is a 486). The question is: how to I get dos on there without overwriting the mbr? Are the alternatives (freedos, pc dos, etc) compatible with all old games?

-thanks!

pevelius · 10-26-2005, 05:56 AM

ms-dos is for ladies, mr-dos is for guys. also check dos and donts of mr-dos before using it.

anyway, here might be some help:

http://www.google.com/search?q=play+dos+games+in+linux

Orkie · 10-26-2005, 07:38 AM

DOSBox has always worked quite well for me for running DOS programs but I've never tried it with any games. FreeDOS is supposed to be trying to be 100% compatible with MS-DOS and I've never had a DOS program fail to run on that for me either.

Quite how you would get it on without touching the MBR I don't know but it must be possible.

aaa · 10-26-2005, 08:29 AM

Do this:
dd if=/dev/hda of=/mbrbackup bs=446 count=1
Then, after dos erases the mbr, use a linux boot disk and do
dd if=/mbrbackup of=/dev/hda bs=446 count=1

muddywaters · 10-26-2005, 08:59 AM

You need a pretty decent computer to run games in DOSbox. The 2G Celeron I'm stuck with currently has trouble with some games.

rookworm · 10-27-2005, 01:02 AM

can i install dos on another disk and dd it over to the partition, or would there be some configuration issues there? What is the grub command to boot dos?

enine · 10-27-2005, 07:04 AM

Why not kill the hibernatoin partition, do you actually use it? I suspend mine when I got from home to work and back and it doesn't even use 10% of the battery, I could stay suspended for days at that rate, so I turned off hibernation and don't use deleted the partition

jailbait · 10-27-2005, 09:07 PM

"can i install dos on another disk and dd it over to the partition, or would there be some configuration issues there?"

I used to dual boot Linux and Novell DOS 7. DOS would only work if I installed it on /dev/hda1. When I copied it from one partition to another I used cp and had no problems. (I can't remember if I had to do anything special to copy the hidden files.)

"What is the grub command to boot dos?"

Here is an explanation of booting DOS with grub.
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...OS_002fWindows

I only used DOS for 10 minutes a week. Rather than put Novell DOS 7 in LILO I created a bootable DOS floppy with the 2 hidden files and command.com. I booted this floppy to the A> prompt. Then I switched to C> and I was in business.

-------------------------
Steve Stites

rookworm · 10-30-2005, 01:20 AM

okay, thanks for the information.

My laptop does not have a floppy or cd drive, so the only feasible way of putting dos on it is by putting the files on the 1st partition using linux (from the harddisk/network). I want to be very careful with overwriting boot records, etc. I have a copy of all the files from a working dos installation on another computer, and of course access to freedos. I can put all the system files on the partition, but I need to know where I can find an image of a boot sector for that partition I can dd into it, and also the exact command I should use.

Thank you