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On FreeDOS and Windows ...
🕑 Added 2023-06-27 13:01:00 +0000 UTCSo, the other night, I did five hours of experimenting if you could install Windows 9x from FreeDOS, and the answer is, yes you can, but it also uncovered another issue that I think is bigger, and I’d like to get some thoughts from folks. Before getting into this, I would like to thank you for all your support, and especially those who contributed to the tip jar, because it seriously makes a huge difference in my life, and helps me move on despite setbacks.
My original plan for this was to create a disk that makes it easier to install, but after sleeping on it, and the problems I ran into, I find myself asking if this is actually a useful product..
Let me lay out what I learned. One of the bigger issues my systems have is they don’t support El Torito booting off CD-ROM. While originally standardized in 1994, support for CD-ROM booting was pretty iffy up until the release of XP. OEM copies of Windows 98 and ME support CD booting but the full retail ones don’t. Windows 2000, and XP support it on all releases.
During the stream, I said NT4 wasn’t bootable, and well, my personal copy isn’t, since I use the copy that came in BackOffice 4.0. However, I checked a retail disk after the stream, and it's bootable. So well, TIL.
So in short, this is only useful if you have a machine that can't boot CD-ROMs, or if you’re using a retail copy of 9x, or a BackOffice copy of NT.
Furthermore, it doesn’t solve the drivers issue. Or the ooga booga issues that come with installing Windows on some machines, some of which we saw in the stream
Throughout the stream, I used a Packard Bell configuration in 86Box, which had issues with losing its CD-ROM drive after reboot that happens on a real machine. This is a problem that can happen on real hardware, although none of the machines in my collection suffer from it.
The second biggest problem comes down to that while having a known good floppy disk is useful, FreeDOS introduces compatibility issues. We saw this with needing to use /nm to override the memory check, and the lack of banners during installation as compared to testing with the stock Windows boot floppy.
If there was a good set of diagnostic utilities I could ship, that would be one thing, but most of the ones that exist are proprietary, or have no provisions for redistribution. Of the major tools I use to test machines, MemTest86+ is the only one I could freely redistribute as its GPL licensed.
I could write new tools from scratch, but without a large amount of testing on a lot of machines, I could never hope to match the quality of what already exists, and such, I find myself back at the original point: is this something actually useful?
At least for the moment, my gut is telling me no.
I still would like to ship and create a floppy disk product, but I think this isn’t the one I should focus my time on. I've had a few ideas on what to possibly try next, but I think I need to do some more experimenting off stream before I'm ready to try this again.
Comments
The Great Quux
I'm still trying to catch up on the COBOL stream! :) This sounds like a good idea in theory, since a FreeDOS floppy that could get on a network share and could run Win1/2/3/95 or NT installation programs would fill a void, but only if it can work in practice. (I suppose a Linux/BSD boot floppy that can get on an NFS share to partition and install an old PC already exist in some form.) Still might be worth spending some more time on, but even if you just left it at that 5-and-a-half hour stream it seems like it's going to be interesting.
