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[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

Update on MS-DOS 7.10.  The reason my partner's text editor would not work 
on it was that it did not install properly to hard disk and the file 
structure got very messed up.

He somehow managed to combine the good parts of the original 7.10 and the 
Chinese one (.sys files from one, sys command from the other, not sure 
which is which) and get it properly on hard drive and things work now. 
Online research came across other people with installation problems.
I will provide more information on this later.

Win98 DOS locks the file system against scandisk and defrag when you are 
not actually running Win98 DOS, so that the defrag which comes with any MS 
DOS will not run in DOS, but I read you can run it under Win3.1 (the Win98 
defrag program).  I don't recall if it works from Win31 for Fat32 but it 
does preserve long file names.

FreeDOS defrag ignores the lock and runs anyway, but messes up long file 
names if you have them.  (I don't know if it works in Fat32).

MS-DOS 7.10 if you try to defrag won't let you and gives a message saying 
it is disabled to protect LFN and FAT32 whether or not you have those.

It was suggested to use defragd.exe to defrag as it can handle long file 
names (but not, I think, Fat32).  This worked with 7.10 but was not very 
complete (it left holes).

FreeDOS defrag DOES work with MS-DOS 7.10 on a 16bit partition, if you DO 
NOT have long file names so we may try that combination if I cannot get 
lilo working.  If we are not using Windows, I don't think any long file 
names should be able to find their way onto that partition, should they? 
When I have copied linux .tgz files to DOS with linux they get truncated.

This would be for the computer that won't boot with loadlin ('not an image 
file) unless you have Win98 or 7.10 DOS.  We just soldered in a new power 
switch, and I need to cable over BL2.  I was able to reinstall BL3 to the 
hard drive where both ext2 partitions (BL3 and BL2) suddenly stopped 
booting (at the UDP line) and where copying the files to another drive 
copied the problem too.  And e2fsck did not fix things.

I will practice lilo on a test drive while awaiting instructions how to 
use lilo with DOS, BL3 and BL2.

For computers that work properly, FreeDOS seems like a much simpler 
solution than DOS7.10, which is tricky to install and offers the 
possibility of screwing things up when you defrag with FreeDOS defrag.
And FreeDOS occupies less lower memory.


MS-DOS 7.10 can be used to boot Win9X from if you change a line in one 
file.  I did not follow why you would want to use it.

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org