DOS Games Discussion

I've just built myself a DOS box last night, just a computer with a hard drive, video card and sound card, nothing special.

Now I'm having trouble booting it up. All that's on the hard drive is the regular Dos bootup files for a normal boot disk, but it won't boot. Does it check to see if it's a floppy? Or what's the problem?

Thanks anyway,
Danger Dan

Details?

For example:
- What happens when you turn it on?
- Does anything show on the screen? If so, what?
- Does it beep (from the PC speaker)? If so, how many beeps?
- Have you tried using a floppy boot disk? If so, did that work?

You should be able to tell if it's checking the floppy if the floppy light comes on during the boot process. You can also check the order it's checking the devices in the BIOS.

SonicMonkey wrote:All that's on the hard drive is the regular Dos bootup files for a normal boot disk, but it won't boot. Does it check to see if it's a floppy? Or what's the problem?

Me thinks you mean you simply copied the files from the floppy...?
Won't work that way.
You need to format your HD with the sys command switch from the bootflop, something as:

format c: /s

That will make the HD bootable in dos.

If the floppy drive light stays on you've put the cable in the wrong way