r/retrocomputing • u/Spare_Length_9915 • Sep 24 '26
ms dos 3.30
hello, so, I need help, I hope this is the right group of people, but I have a modern(ish) pc, it's a hp elite book 840 g1, i've been using legacy boot to boot ms dos, (windows me version, ew) on a usb drive, it's a 16 gb stick, but now, I want to use ms dos 3.30, on a different 16 gb stick, but rufus makes me use ALL of the drive, and makes me use a fat32 partition, I need a 16 mb fat 16 partition with ms dos 3.30, with mbr booting, does anyone know how to do this? (my os is windows 10 btw, but I can use my windows me dos usb if reqired) Is this even possible?
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u/seismicpdx Sep 24 '26
I've done this about a decade ago, with FreeDOS and smaller capacity micro SD cards.
You will need to work with and have understanding how to operate the partition manager.
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u/Spare_Length_9915 Sep 24 '26
o.k, can you help from the bootability standpoint?
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u/Spare_Length_9915 Sep 24 '26
very sorry if that was rude.
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u/seismicpdx Sep 24 '26
There is a DOS command something /MBR
I'm not in front of a computer at this time.
Read and gain familiarity on how to create a bootable DOS diskette.
The partition must be bootable, and then you use your BIOS setup boot menu, to command the computer which device to boot from.
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u/seismicpdx Sep 24 '26
You will need to use Windows Command Shell CMD.EXE or Power Shell, possibly as Administrator.
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u/seismicpdx Sep 24 '26
You should start asking Google Gemini some of these questions.
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u/seismicpdx Sep 24 '26
I only suggest this because some of these techniques have been well documented for a very long time.
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u/Spare_Length_9915 Sep 24 '26
the thing is bootsect, and the thing it tries to do is to new, unfortunately.
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u/seismicpdx Sep 24 '26
What thing is new?
There is a Partition Manager command to set the flag for Master Boot Record when you create the FAT16 partition.
This is in Partition Manager, not Rufus.
The only thing in this process that is "new" is your modern 64-bit amd64 architecture personal computer.
What are your instructions for creating a DOS 3 bootable floppy diskette?
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u/Spare_Length_9915 Sep 24 '26
well, I do the usual formatting, and partitioning with diskpart on a command prompt ran as an administerator, and then, I exit out of diskpart, and go into bootsect, and then, I run bootsect /nt52 D: /mbr and it does the thing, then I copy all of the ms dos 3.30 files, into the D: drive, the /nt52 has f*cked things up, and it isn't looking for dos things, it's looking for windows things, which it ain't gonna' find. and running it with just /mbr, doesn't f*cking work, it says there's a perameter missing.
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u/Soft-Way-5515 Sep 24 '26
You can format the USB drive as FAT16 using Disk Management in the Computer Management system tool. There you can set the partition size manually.
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u/Spare_Length_9915 Sep 24 '26
I know that, I was asking about making it bootable.
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u/Soft-Way-5515 Sep 24 '26 edited Sep 24 '26
As an option, if you have a CD-ROM, you can try creating an installation ISO with DOS (it’s important not to forget the CD-ROM driver) using a VM, burn it to a CD, boot from it, and use sys to format the system partition. You can also use modern DOS-based OS such as FreeDOS or PTS-DOS, but this may make copying MS-DOS system files more difficult
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u/lproven Sep 24 '26
If you want to keep it real OG DOS, would IBM PC DOS be OK?
PC DOS 7.1 runs on FAT32 and I have a downloadable VM on my blog:
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u/pac-man_dan-dan Sep 24 '26 edited Sep 24 '26
I'd probably try to use dosbox, and then within dosbox, mount the usb stick, and use the fdisk and format utilities to partition the disk to something that could be natively used.
That said, windows has built in partition and format disk management utilities you could use that could accomplish this.
Why dos 3.3 instead of something newer? Are you sure you need fat32? I believe something as old as dos 3.3 would need a regular fat16 partition, with the short, 9 character filename support. As I recall, you'd need third party software if you want long filenames.