paperovyy.site
Published: 26 Sep. 2024
• Overview
• Windows 3.1 on FreeDOS
• Upgrade and My Prompt Script
This post uses the date before this site was created.
On a stock it had:
and also included software:
Also:
Also notebook has a small display for basic info:
JAN code: 4988618127189
Standard price: 328000 JPN
Bottom-right module could be a Floppy drive, a CD drive or (as I remember) an another HDD.
Source:
www.inversenet.co.jp
It was a notebook designed for home and business use, released in November 1996 under FMV-BIBLO series. My story of getting hands on it is not quite interesting, however I've found something related to business software among the music and a few games. It had Windows 95 with all the drivers installed and last used in 2001. Of course, battery was already dead, but thankfully I got a power supply with it.
Long story short, I was trying to install Win95 or 98 on a couple of "new" 2000year HDD's and even on CF card after original has died but it all failed due to lack of CD-drive. (yeah I could install it from floppy disks, but I had only 20 at the moment and they all had data on them). Copying win95 folder on an HDD didn't help at all and installing first part on VM and continuing on a real machine either.
Later on, Floppy drive died due to a stormy night it got flooded with water and the only way to transfer data was to manually remove and insert the CF card (which acted as an HDD) every time you need it. On it's last month (as of now) notebook was running FreeDOS with Windows 3.1 Standard (No 386 Enhanced mode) and I've managed to upgrade myself to MS-DOS 7?, but it required some fixes to my own-written software and atleast DOSKEY which I didn't do, because an HDD ribbon cable was damaged.
I tried to repair it, even soldered directly (sorry D;) to the other connector, but BIOS still refused to read from it. Now the only way left is to buy that HDD cable from China or Chechia, but currently I have no money - the same story with the floppy drive from the US, it's even more expensive.
So, I would recommend using a PCMCIA to SD/CF adapter (MS-DOS needs drivers for these, Win9x should have one in it already) or building own Dial-Up network, if you're more experienced (I tried, but my Cisco thingy failed).
Completely wrong! CF card as an HDD method (not PCMCIA) is appreciated by many retro enthusiasts: it's cheap and way more reliable than any era-appropriate HDD. Although, if the drive is new enough or proven to be working good to a certain extent (like for authentic reasons or it's a SATA drive basically) you can put it, no problem. Sending files through Dial-up is another story and it does work, it's just handled on the OS-side.
Here he is, on my desk.
One of latest "GUI" (to the left) I've made using batch script. There is also an Y/N selector for mouse driver and cyrillic layout aka the Prompt Script.
Me playing DOOM. I've finished both games and even began Quake I.
Edit 1: I have an image of the original HDD with Windows 95 and drivers, but it was made using Acronis suite, so I can't really extract it yet :)
Edit 2: Notebook comes with a special version of DOS, named "DOS/V" that allows double-byte character set for Japanese text. (Wikipedia screenshot)
Edit 3: If I recall correctly, copying Windows folder onto the hard disk didn't help because it would complain at almost any driver and tell they were missing, including the graphics chip, motherboard-related, etc. It would stop the installation and ask for the directory, which was already set to the correct one. I think one day I just skipped all these drivers and Windows was "somehow" working, far from perfect though.
So, as of now, FreeDOS officially does not support Windows 3.x, but it can be launched in a standard mode using "win /s" command or through a kernel patch that you would have to compile with your own hands (which I didn't do, cause' I don't know how to do so :P ). Copying and declaring DOS executables obviously won't help you - I tried. Win16 apps run OK, but every time you try to launch an MS-DOS app or a prompt - FreeDOS crashes.
So, on the last days of that notebook being alive I had an opportunity to upgrade it to MS-DOS 7 (or 8) that comes as a diskcopy.dll on Windows 7. I wanted to install the legendary 6.22 here, but BIOS refused to boot from it (I installed DOS through virtualbox). Thankfully Rufus, a media creation tool, can do a MS-DOS boot disk on my removable drive, but it accepts only the version that is located in the previously mentioned DLL file. For some reason, my prompt script refused to work on a newer version of DOS and I decided to rewrite it on Basic.
The only thing left to implement was TYPE command. I can rewrite it like I did in early version of own batch script - writing each line of ANSI art line by line, or use application that does the same job that can be generated by TheDraw (ANSI art designer app).
this is an outro
