On Wed, 14 Feb 2018 08:39:12 +0000, Dan S. MacAbre wrote:

Bob Eager wrote:
On Wed, 14 Feb 2018 00:45:45 +0000, Dan S. MacAbre wrote:

Andrew Mawson wrote:
OK wrong forum I know but there are a lot of knowledgeable people on
this forum

I need some software that will run under DOS 6.22 that will allow me
to copy files to a CD/DVD-ROM Drive. This is on a legacy CNC machine
- I'm replacing a dying Viglen PC where the only exchangeable media
is 4.5" Floppy for a Compac DC7600 SFF PC that I have which also has
CD/DVD read / write drive that would be very handy for data exchange.

NB this is running genuine DOS 6.22 NOT a DOS window under Windoze !

Any pointers very welcome !


Andrew

Do you think you could run this in a VM? You might try Disk2VHD,
which would at least give you a copy of the whole thing to play with.
The VHD can then be opened in something like 7zip, and individual
files transferred, if you don't want to try to boot it up in a VM.

How does this help him WRITE a CD?


I thought he was only looking for a way to get data from the disk.

Me too! However, between his OP and further follow ups to the group, I
gather that what he's after is a means of exchanging data between the SFF
upon which he has resurrected the OS and apps that had been running on a
dying Viglen, and other more modern PCs via CD-R media.

Intrigued by how he was able to install MSDOS 6.22, which is normally
distributed on three 1.44MB floppy disks, onto the SFF which, as I
expected, doesn't have a built in FDD, I googled for the specs. Although
it lacks most things, it claims to possess a SATA II 16x DVD re-writer/48
speed CD re-writer *and* an IDE CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive. Being a SFF, I
wouldn't have expected it to sport even an ATA(IDE) connector, let alone
an FDD header but, only after scrolling down a very long page of
confusing specifications, it appears amazingly enough, to include an ATA
(IDE) header (although still no FDD header).

He didn't explain how he managed to install MSDOS 6.22 onto a floppyless
PC nor how he transferred the software over, so one is left to assume
that he cloned the HDD from the Viglen to the 80GB SATA HDD in the HP/
Compaq SFF machine, relying on the BIOS setting to configure the SATA
ports into IDE compatability mode, or else he's just simply moved the
drive from out of the old Viglen into the new machine and simply
configured it to boot from that.

Without such details, it was all but impossible to properly understand
why he needed help in getting a CD Re-writer to function as a writer
under MSDOS 6.22 . The CDROM aspect is covered by the basic DOS ATAPI
driver files which I think may have been available on the installation
floppies by then - it *was* a long time ago since I last used MSDOS 6.22
(and even longer since MSDOS 3.30)!

I can't recall whether CDROM burning software became available before
windows 95 arrived on the scene so I can't definitively say that such DOS
only CDROM burning software ever existed. A better option might be USB
flash media as the basis for his "Sneakernet"(tm) method of data exchange
or, better still, and more likely, a network adapter using DOS drivers
which were still being supplied even with Fast ethernet PCI adapters.

Although the built in LAN port is Gigabit Ethernet, there might still be
DOS driver software available for the ethernet chip used on the MoBo.
Failing that, assuming there's a spare PCI slot - the specs fail to say
anything about that- he could fit a fast ethernet adapter that still has
dos driver support available as pretty well most did.

If he can supply a bit more info on how this PC interfaces to the CNC
machine, we might even be able to advise him on setting up virtualisation
software[1] running under the SFF's original winXP Host OS (or even under
a Linux host), assuming a serial or printer port was used for the CNC
interface, which can be passed through[2] to a suitably configured VM
clone of the MSDOS 6.22 installation as it was originally set up on the
old Viglen.

[1] There was no mention in the specs as to whether or not the 64 bit P4
CPU used in the SFF machine, supported hardware virtualisation with
Intel's VT-x feature so he might have to use virtualisation software
which, like Oracle's free VirtualBox, isn't reliant on such hardware
support. Even without the benefit of such hardware support, I'd expect
the SFF hosted VM to still be at least an order of magnitude more
powerful than the original Viglen machine so shouldn't suffer
'performance issues' in this application.

[2] I'm running VirtualBox which, on checking the stopped VMs'
configurations, appears to only support Serial Port pass-through. There
wasn't an option for parallel ports. However, it might support this in a
DOS VM but not having set such a VM up, I have no simple way to verify
this. I'd have to trawl through the comprehensive user guide to dig this
sort of arcane information out and I'm not about to do so this at this
stage of the proceedings.

--
Johnny B Good