keyboard problems

[giogio]

so i formatted my hard disk to fat32 on my dell dimension 4600 and installed dos 6.22 for my dos gaming needs. i have my emm386 driver active cd drivers installed disabled cache writing, im running raptor right now and its so smooth BUT i keep having this problem with this game and ALL games i run. The keyboard does not behave the way its supposed to AT ALL. NOT EVEN CLOSE. theres HUGE delays in the keyboard communicating to the system and keys are TOTALLY WRONG. i press enter at a menu and it will go up or down, i press down arrow or escape key and it will enter, or i have to press the same key dozens of times for it to register. i tryed editing the autoexec.bat to include the line KEYB US to no avail. my keyboard is a usb keyboard and is programmed to work by the bios no matter what so i can write in command line perfectly fine, but for some reason it will not work correctly in ANY games. should i try a ps/2 keyboard? iv been working on this project for days now and growing impatient. i refuse to use virtual box or dosbox or free dos. please can someone help me identify the problem and find a solution? thanks for anybodies input i highly appreciate it.

~gio

[dosraider]

This:

so i formatted my hard disk to fat32 on my dell dimension 4600 and installed dos 6.22 .........

And this:

...... my keyboard is a usb keyboard

Not good.
Two points :
-> Fat 32 and MsDos 6.22 aren't compatible, use Fat 16 or Freedos with Fat32( or even dos 7.x extruded from W98 ....)
-> USB wasn't around in MsDos6.22 times, anything you read about added USB drivers for MsDos will suck, use PS/2.

And some more remarks, but I'm too lazy to go deeper into it, just do some googlin' , you'll find all the info you need on the net.
Or dig a bit @ http://vogons.zetafleet.com/ , enough valid tech info about this subject over there.

[giogio]

Yea i had a feeling it was the keyboard, but so far 6.22 command line and programs run great with fat32, il partition a FAT drive when my ps/2 keyboard comes in the mail, and bro trust me iv been doing some HARDCORE LATE NIGHT GOOGLING for days now, my floppy drive failed so i couldnt even install this junk naturally, i had to use cd's which was a bit*h to figure out itself, im determined.

Anyway i forget whats the rule with FAT? it has to be less than 2GB or something? Thanks for all your help i appreciate it very much !

[dosraider]

LULZ.
MsDos 6.22 does NOT support FAT 32 natively. PERIOD.
BTW, if you used a CD to install DOS it's prob dos7.x (or PCDos, DrDos ....) you have installed, MSDos 6.22 was never released on CD.

As for partition sizes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table

Maybe you could use a partition manager?
As is: GParted.
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
Freeware and damn good.
(Careful with this kind of stuffs, you can screw up a lot if you don't know what you're doing ........)

[giogio]

na i made 3 bootable disks with the .img files for dos 6.22 using PowerIso, its not 7.1 I already tried 7.1 I dont like it.

so thats a 2gb partition for FAT?

[giogio]

n thanks for the partition manager stuff! Iv been making partitions with my XP boot cd lol, gotta do everything the hard way

[dosraider]

na i made 3 bootable disks with the .img files for dos 6.22 using PowerIso, its not 7.1 I already tried 7.1 I dont like it.

Oh my ......................
3 bootable CDs ....?????

You only need 1 (one!) bootable CD,
Copy all install files in one folder, create 1 bootable CD with PowerIso, add a generic dos CD driver in the boot files, add all the install files on the CD root, edit config/autoexec to load dos CD drivers at boot, you can access all needed install files, works as a charm. ONE CD.

And once again, MsDos 6.22 can NOT work with FAT32.
It can NOT read/write to FAT32, means you even can NOT install MsDos6.22 on a fat32 partition.
PERIOD

Your claim that you use MsDos 6.22 on FAT32 is misinformation and kinda idiotic.

This whole idiotic topic is now pretty high on my 'delete soon' list.

FYI: http://www.cn-dos.net/msdos71/dosfat32.htm

[giogio]

maybe its fat when i formatted from my windows xp cd i did it as fat 32, i did reformat it with the dos boot up disk maybe i did it fat and didnt pay attention, but i can assure you that one cd thing did not work, after %25 it prompted me to insert disk two, this was with all 3 boot disks information on one CD with the first disk images boot information, i believe the install looks for the second boot disks image to confirm it can install disk two and since you can only put one boot image per cd this is impossible. i figured it out when i burned 3 cds containing all the data from each disk and seperate boot images, that stuff i found on the internet informing ppl you can just throw all 3 disks on 1 cd with 1 boot image doesnt work.

cheers to you for all your help

[giogio]

*update*

You are correct sir i ran Fdisk just now and my system is FAT16, sorry for the misinformation!

[dosraider]

Pffffffff ...... tiresome.

When you partition with MsDos fdisk/format you format using FAT16.

About the one CD trick: it works, been done a zillion times by a lot of peeps, including myself.
Once again: -in short, skipping some details, you'll figure it out (or not..... ) -
-> *A* You need to copy all files from the 3 flops into a folder.
-> *B* You need to create a bootable CD using floppy 1.
-> *C* You must put the files from *A* into the root of the CD.
-> *D* You must add dos generic CD drivers into *B*
-> *E* You must edit config.sys and autoexec.bat from *B* so that the files from *C* can be accessed by boot.

Reason: when you boot from CD only the files in the boot sector will be accessible by Dos, by adding dos CD drivers and loading them the whole CD can be accessed, also the files from *C*.

Then MsDos setup on one bootable CD works.
FYI: generic CD drivers from a W98 bootflop can be used for this.