Moving a healthy volume from one laptop to another

"philo " wrote in message
...
On 02/09/2014 07:29 PM, BillW50 wrote:

IIRC version 4 introduced dosshell

Yes I believe you are right or even a later version 4. And speaking
about Dosshell, I heard only MS-DOS v4 sold in Europe included
multitasking. And for some reason v5 didn't have it. I never had V5
as I went from 3.21 to 6.0. And I really liked Dosshell (I guess most
people hated it). I used it a lot until I started using Windows 3.1.
I think later versions of 6, MS dropped Dosshell.

4.01 was the only version of DOS released by Microsoft
4.0 never got out the door and I understand there was an OEM version
4.01a

Yes I recall MS-DOS v4 wasn't around long and MS quickly released v5.
MS-DOS v4 must be one of the rarest MS-DOS. Well probably not too many
MS-DOS v1 around that I think of it. First version I used was 2.11.

Next release was 5.O and it contained a newer version of dosshell

I don't doubt that for a second.

The still newer versions had dosshell but it might have been on a
supplementary disk (I sure don't recall)

Well I used all versions of MS-DOS v6. v6.0 definitely had it. And one
of the later versions dropped it. Can't recall now which one of the v6
versions that happened in though. If I had to guess, I would say v6.0
had it and gone from the rest.

I loved dosshell and now that I use Linux I use the similar...Midnight
Commander Almost the same as Norton Commander for DOS...as a matter
of fact...Norton Commander came out first...that was back in the day
when Norton produced top-or-the-line utilities!

I too liked it a lot. There was some compatibility problems I recall.
But it was more like don't try this with this program, etc. When you
learned what didn't work with so and so program, it was really nice.

No version of DOS was ever able to multi-task unless one used a rare
third party application...which was a precursor to Windows.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview

Oh yes! I remember DESQview. No I am sure I read it right years ago.
They said there was a multitasking DOS v4 only available in Europe. I'll
never forget it. Although I never was able to verify this statement.

OTOH: The earlier CP/M could multi-task

you could bring up another terminal in the same way you can do in
Linux (or any *nix)

Yes I remember this too. But it wasn't the standard CP/M. I forgot
exactly what it was called now. I also recall it was very expensive. The
last version I ran was CP/M 3+. Which was the same as 3.1 I believe.
Then Gary Kildall pulled the plug on CP/M.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Windows Live Mail 2009 v14
Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 4GB - Windows 7 Home SP1

On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 16:49:09 -0700, Ken Blake wrote:

My current computer has a floppy drive. I just checked how old the
computer is, and to my surprise it's five years old.

It has a floppy drive. As best I can remember, I've never used its
floppy drive. And except for a handful that I've kept (don't ask me
why; there's really no good reason) I don't have any floppy disks left
either.

My next computer (probably in the next year or two) won't have a
floppy drive either.

Your next computer may not even have an optical drive. The last two laptops
that I bought didn't have them.

--

Char Jackson

In article , says...

"philo " wrote in message
...
On 02/09/2014 03:19 PM, BillW50 wrote:
"philo" wrote in message
...
1TB sheesh

Last year I had to use some floppies so I dug out a box of them I
had in the closet. I bet I had to go through fifty of them before I
came up with 3 good ones.

Oh no! I got thousands of floppies, some of them has expensive
software on them. If only about 6% are still good today, I am in deep
doo-doo. :-(

The good news is that some of the older ones were still good.

I recall that when I actually did use floppies , if I got new ones at
Radio Shack they were all dead withing a month or two.

Oh that sounds hopeful. I never bought any Radio Shack ones that I could
recall. Although back in the 80's I discovered some floppies I was using
on my Commodore 64/128 computers were failing about every 6 months. If I
reformatted them, they worked for another 6 months and then fail again.

I thought what the heck. So I tried them in my MS-DOS machines and they
instantly reported as bad disks. So I always formatted them first on my
MS-DOS machines first. If they passed, then I would use them on my
Commodores. And I had no more problems with floppies on Commodores. I
think Commodores allows 5 tries before they would fail to format.

The National Bureau of Standards did a study on magnetic fields and
floppy disks. And they concluded that weak magnetic fields not strong
enough to instantly change anything on the disk won't harm any floppy
long term.

I got curious and I placed a floppy with extra data on it on the right
side of my color CRT. Turned it on and off. It still worked. Okay so I
left it there for many years and nothing ever happened to it. So I guess
they were right.

That is not to say a floppy can't be instantly erased by a CRT color
monitor. Yes this indeed can happen. I had seen one guy put his floppy
on top of his monitor, turned it on and then put the floppy in the drive
and everything was erased. I tried to erase floppies with all of my
monitors, but all of mine the degaussing coil just wasn't strong enough.

I've had similar happen. In my case I had/have probably a banana box
full of floppies. They've always been taken well care of, as an idea, I
still have 500 vinyl records and maybe 4/5 of them have any scratches on
them at all. The floppies have been equally well treated.

On occassion over last few years (less so now with USB & cd/dvds being
able to boot a pc) I've needed a floppy. I go to box and find it's not
unusual for 19 out of 20 (maybe more) are toast. They can't be read or
even be reformatted properly. Sometimes it says they are but won't work
anyway. Only thing they're any good for anymore is for starting fires,
same as my mid 70's reel-to-reel tapes.

Also a pain it's not so easy to create a DOS based boot floppy anymore
since 98SE. I have a very old Dell laptop (Pentium 133Mz) with a working
floppy disk drive I've kept just for this purpose among others.

"BillW50" wrote in message
...

"philo " wrote in message
...
The still newer versions had dosshell but it might have been on a
supplementary disk (I sure don't recall)

Well I used all versions of MS-DOS v6. v6.0 definitely had it. And one
of the later versions dropped it. Can't recall now which one of the v6
versions that happened in though. If I had to guess, I would say v6.0
had it and gone from the rest.

You are right!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Shell

I loved dosshell and now that I use Linux I use the
similar...Midnight Commander Almost the same as Norton Commander for
DOS...as a matter of fact...Norton Commander came out first...that
was back in the day when Norton produced top-or-the-line utilities!

I too liked it a lot. There was some compatibility problems I recall.
But it was more like don't try this with this program, etc. When you
learned what didn't work with so and so program, it was really nice.

No version of DOS was ever able to multi-task unless one used a rare
third party application...which was a precursor to Windows.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview

Oh yes! I remember DESQview. No I am sure I read it right years ago.
They said there was a multitasking DOS v4 only available in Europe.
I'll never forget it. Although I never was able to verify this
statement.

Here is the near-mythical multitasking MS-DOS 4.00.

http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?p=1769

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Windows Live Mail 2009 v14
Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 4GB - Windows 7 Home SP1

On 02/10/2014 05:58 AM, BillW50 wrote:



snip[
Oh yes! I remember DESQview. No I am sure I read it right years ago.
They said there was a multitasking DOS v4 only available in Europe.
I'll never forget it. Although I never was able to verify this
statement.

Here is the near-mythical multitasking MS-DOS 4.00.

http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?p=1769




WOW I never heard of that.


They must have had problems with it or everyone would have used it.


found this

http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/?p=2931


You can go to that page and where it says HOSTED you can go to jDosbox
and download an emulated version of Dos4 and try it

On 02/10/2014 12:34 AM, pjp wrote:
ybe 4/5 of them have any scratches on
them at all. The floppies have been equally well treated.

On occassion over last few years (less so now with USB & cd/dvds being
able to boot a pc) I've needed a floppy. I go to box and find it's not
unusual for 19 out of 20 (maybe more) are toast. They can't be read or
even be reformatted properly. Sometimes it says they are but won't work
anyway. Only thing they're any good for anymore is for starting fires,
same as my mid 70's reel-to-reel tapes.

Also a pain it's not so easy to create a DOS based boot floppy anymore
since 98SE. I have a very old Dell laptop (Pentium 133Mz) with a working
floppy disk drive I've kept just for this purpose among others.




Well, if you even need a floppy boot disk image

bootdisk.com still exists


I keep quite a few vintage machines here

Hi, Ken.

My next computer (probably in the next year or two) won't have a floppy
drive either.

As I think I've said here before, neither of my last two motherboards has
even had an FDD connector. And this latest one that I'm using now does not
even have an IDE or PATA connector, so I had to retire my 2 DVD burners and
buy a new SATA version. (For a decade or two, I used only SCSI HDDs and
optical drives; my mobos never had SCSI connectors and I always used Adaptec
adapter cards.)

Maybe they call it HARDware because it's hard to keep up with the advances
in technology. ;^}

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2012 (Build 16.4.3508.0205) in Win8.1 Pro


"Ken Blake" wrote in message
news
On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 16:57:15 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote:

On Sun, 9 Feb 2014 15:19:47 -0600, "BillW50" wrote:


"philo" wrote in message
...
1TB sheesh

Last year I had to use some floppies so I dug out a box of them I had
in the closet. I bet I had to go through fifty of them before I came
up with 3 good ones.

Oh no! I got thousands of floppies, some of them has expensive software
on them. If only about 6% are still good today, I am in deep doo-doo.
:-(

I can't check my floppy disks because I threw all of them away back in the
mid to late 1990's. I removed and tossed my floppy drives back then, as
well.


My current computer has a floppy drive. I just checked how old the
computer is, and to my surprise it's five years old.

It has a floppy drive. As best I can remember, I've never used its
floppy drive. And except for a handful that I've kept (don't ask me
why; there's really no good reason) I don't have any floppy disks left
either.

My next computer (probably in the next year or two) won't have a
floppy drive either.

On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 16:17:20 -0800, Gene E. Bloch
wrote:

On 2/09/2014, Ken Blake posted:
On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 22:58:42 +0100, "s|b" wrote:

On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 11:28:14 -0700, Ken Blake wrote:

Yes, but... How does that differ from my number 3?

"or in an external USB case."

That's not the same as a USB adapter.



I thought you would say that. g

Yes, you're right, but to me, it's a very minor point.

Not even minor, IMO. Just a tiny variant of the same idea


Yep! My point exactly (I just said it slightly more gently than you
did). g

On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 23:59:38 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote:

My next computer (probably in the next year or two) won't have a
floppy drive either.

Your next computer may not even have an optical drive. The last two laptops
that I bought didn't have them.


Laptops often don't have them to save space and weight. My last two
laptops didn't have them either. But when I say "my next computer,"
I'm talking about a desktop.

And even if desktops don't come with them, I will almost certainly
again get a custom-built computer, and I will very likely choose to
have one.

On Mon, 10 Feb 2014 09:11:35 -0600, "R. C. White"
wrote:

Hi, Ken.

My next computer (probably in the next year or two) won't have a floppy
drive either.

As I think I've said here before, neither of my last two motherboards has
even had an FDD connector. And this latest one that I'm using now does not
even have an IDE or PATA connector, so I had to retire my 2 DVD burners and
buy a new SATA version. (For a decade or two, I used only SCSI HDDs and
optical drives; my mobos never had SCSI connectors and I always used Adaptec
adapter cards.)

Maybe they call it HARDware because it's hard to keep up with the advances
in technology. ;^}


LOL!


"Ken Blake" wrote in message
news


My next computer (probably in the next year or two) won't have a
floppy drive either.


So, speaking of what things are called, do you call this top-posting
or bottom-posting? G

On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 18:53:55 -0600, philo* wrote:

On 02/09/2014 05:34 PM, BillW50 wrote:
"C

Anybody interested in purchasing 100 copies of MS-DOS v4 (French
Edition) in 720kb 3.5 floppies (still sealed)? If you are lucky, 6% of
them still might work. :-(




I bet it's version 4.01


If it's 4.0 you have a real collectors item as I think 4.01 was the only
"4" released.


Nope! G See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS#Versions and
you'll see there was a 4.0.

On Mon, 10 Feb 2014 07:59:44 -0600, philo* wrote:


Well, if you even need a floppy boot disk image

bootdisk.com still exists


Is it still Plato's web site? I remember Plato very well--from
newsgroups, and we corresponded by e-mail a little too.

On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 16:23:21 -0800, Gene E. Bloch
wrote:

On 2/09/2014, Ken Blake posted:
On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 15:47:42 -0500, Paul wrote:


Kingston makes a 1TB USB key. Only $1500 CDN. What a steal.

http://www.canadacomputers.com/produ...item_id=063602


Amazon.com sells it for *only* $1285.16 g

But they also have a U32 Shadow? 1TB External 2.5-in USB 3.0 Mini
Portable Hard Drive for $94.95. It's not much larger physically (4.9
x 0.5 x 2.9 inches), but it's an actual rotating drive, not a flash
drive.

I still have a couple of CF hard drive cards. They're cute :-)



I'm not at all familiar with these. What does "CF" stand for.

On Mon, 10 Feb 2014 00:59:38 -0500, Char Jackson wrote:

On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 16:49:09 -0700, Ken Blake wrote:

My current computer has a floppy drive. I just checked how old the
computer is, and to my surprise it's five years old.

It has a floppy drive. As best I can remember, I've never used its
floppy drive. And except for a handful that I've kept (don't ask me
why; there's really no good reason) I don't have any floppy disks left
either.

My next computer (probably in the next year or two) won't have a
floppy drive either.

Your next computer may not even have an optical drive. The last two
laptops
that I bought didn't have them.

In this new age of technology, optical media is being used less and less
and for good reason: it's unreliable. People have come to refer to USB
keys and direct downloads. Hell, even Blu-Ray isn't succeeding as well as
people expected knowing that you can simply download the video you want to
watch from iTunes or your cable box.

--
Silver Slimer
GNU/Linux is a duct-taped form of Communism

On 02/10/2014 11:19 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
On Mon, 10 Feb 2014 07:59:44 -0600, philo wrote:


Well, if you even need a floppy boot disk image

bootdisk.com still exists


Is it still Plato's web site? I remember Plato very well--from
newsgroups, and we corresponded by e-mail a little too.




I used to talk to Plato on 24hoursupport.helpdesk maybe ten years ago.


I even sent him a few dollars for his very beneficial website...

I do not know if he is still running it or if it's someone else.


It's been a long time since I've needed a Win98 boot floppy but I see
the site has been updated as it has info for USB boot sticks