XT-IDE Setup and DOS Install

[@James-fm4lk]

Hey! I like the "presenter" thing you did in this! It's cool to see the man behind the camera for once! It's awesome!

[@Madness832]

He certainly isn't hard on the eyes! :D

[@nekomasteryoutube3232]

Pretty sure he's shown himself before but I think he had a beard back then?

[@dbp-wv1hs]

Nah, if you go back he's shown himself a few times and he always looked like this (clean shaven + long hair).

[@ozzie_goat]

Always a good day when AkBKukU uploads.

[@LightTheUnicorn]

That's a neat card. Your explanation through all the steps was fantastic, I didn't know about "fdisk /mbr" on later versions of MS-DOS, that's useful stuff to know!

[@Toasty_Gaming]

Installed compaq oem dos 3.31 on my compaq portable 1 with a xt-ide. I let this project sit for years and this short and comprehensive video led me to complete success. thanks!

[@TechTangents]

EDIT: I haven't had a chance to test this but based on the response I'm getting, it should have been "autoexec.bat". I know in the video it looks like I hit ctrl+c and canceled the file, but I did see that and fixed it later. I just didn't get a recording of it. It took a fair amount of effort to setup the face on 5153 shot with right lighting and minimal reflections and didn't think it was important enough to have to setup again. I should have put an on screen note about it, but I didn't think people would be scrutinizing it that closely. In the future I will not make that mistake. ORIGINAL: To those who mention autoexe__c__.bat: "autoexe.bat" worked for me. So I don't know what the problem is. I haven't put a lot of time into DOS so perhaps some versions handle it differently.

[@JarrodCoombes]

I am not sure what you mean by "it worked for me". in the video you actually did not save it, you hit CRTL-C instead of CTRL-Z, and it's missing in the directory you did immediately after, then you rebooted and DOS asked for the date and time, which it only does when you do not have an AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS in the root of the drive. That said, I'm pretty sure it's always been autoexec.bat, but will admit that early versions of DOS may use autoexe.bat as well, I'd need to test that, which I might do at some point.

[@TechTangents]

I accidentally hit ctrl-c in the video, noticed and went back and fixed it, but my camera stopped recording after the directory listing. That head on shot on the 5153 took a long time to get lit correctly and angled just right and I didn't want to try and re-create it when I found out in editing. I should have put an on screen note mentioning that. I don't remember if it asked the date after I had it finally setup(off camera that is), but I think it might have. I'll have to go back and take another look.

[@TzOk]

As long as it keeps asking for the time and date it means that it didn't see its autoexec.bat...

[@aquaferme1346]

I still use Wordperfect 4.2 on 360k floppy on a PC XT clone that does not even have a hard drive. I use it when writing important stuff... whe I need to be productive and concentrate... to get away from the noise of a multi-tasking computer.... This works well, I am much more focussed on my writing when I ditch the laptop and go sit in from of the offline desktop

[@FrethKindheart]

*autoexec.bat ... you missed the c.

[@johnuser5162]

That didnt happen till DOS 4. It was call autoexe untill then.

[@FrethKindheart]

Thanks for correcting me. I figured that might've been the case, but I was too lazy to look it up. lol

[@Ice_Karma]

+John User Er, no.

[@FrethKindheart]

I just downloaded an MS-DOS 1.25 manual and it references AUTOEXEC.BAT, so I was right. DOS 3.3 manual also references AUTOEXEC.BAT

[@pelgervampireduck]

nope, it has always been called "autoexec.bat"

[@bundesautobahn7]

Shouldn't it have been autoexec.bat?? And one thing I would've added to the autoexec.bat would've been: prompt $p$g, so it shows the prompt as c:\>

[@BoyoOfficial]

Exactly. I wanted to kms after I saw that.

[@jasonknight1085]

He also hit ^C not ^Z so the file wasn't saved, which is why when he typed DIR it wasn't even flipping THERE!!! Also why when he rebooted it asked for the date and time, the default behavior when there's no autoexec.bat /FAIL/ hard.

[@JessicaFEREM]

I like how both of those cards combine and don't need any IDE cables.

[@tj71520]

cool retro ibm pc. I have the original dos 3 floppies and manuals as well.

[@piecaruso97]

i like your new background with you talking, it looks way more professional than usual, continue in this direction

[@dbp-wv1hs]

I'm curious - did "More stupid problems later" refer to problems you eventually overcame and found frustrating, or silly mistakes on your part?

[@TechTangents]

The first break was the installer not supporting subdirectories and crashing when you tried it. The second part was that the installer did something weird to DOS that made it think the directory listing of the C: drive was the same as A: .I had to restart to get it to clear. I thought it had overwritten the C: drive at first and just cut out that part. Then when I launched the software it tool forever to get to the menu. So TL;DR, their installer really sucks.

[@lm_dccxl4078]

You look very natural on camera, cool.

[@garthhowe297]

Your video made my installation quite painless and quick. Thanks!

[@matthewsvideos8235]

Makes me want to try some command on my later 5160 XT. Some command lines relating to the drive format I didn’t know about. I still use MFM drives on my system until I run out of them. Also DOS 3.3

[@hanro50]

A face reveal... I wasn't expecting this, but I'm ok with it

[@yoshi314]

he already did it on video with druaga1.

[@tjyoyo3]

Waaaaaaaay long ago

[@kpanic23]

If you don't want SELECT to copy the files to the harddisk's root directory, just tell it the path! E.g.: SELECT A: C:\DOS 001 US Or in my case: SELECT A: C:\DOS 049 GR

[@TechTangents]

Perhaps I should have RTFM a bit more. I don't feel too bad I missed that, but I is unfortunate that is another inaccuracy in the video now. This video took a lot of time to make and tried to cover a lot of things.

[@kpanic23]

@@TechTangents Hey, never mind! SELECT's syntax has always been a little bit mystic. Actually, I wanted to start my own "DOStalgia" channel years ago but never had the time. Hence, I appreciate all the time, work and effort you put in your videos. Keep it on!

[@jrmcferren]

As far as autoexec.bat files go, this is my recommendation for a PC or XT Running DOS 3.3 or earlier (5.0 and later have an @ as the first character): ECHO OFF PATH=C:\DOS PROMPT $P$G DATE TIME This file tells the system to turn off echoing to the local screen (Later versions such as 5 or later) can be told to "echo off" the echo off command with the single line echo off @ character (@ECHO OFF). The first command sets the path to C:\DOS, the second command sets the prompt to PATH and the Greater than Symbol (C:\>), the last two allow you to set date and time. If you have a RTC board you can replace the date and time commands with the command to load the driver if it isn't loaded with CONFIG.SYS. Now, with your configuration I recommend not having a config.sys file due to the low memory, but if you have 640k, I recommend a "FILES=20" line, this makes more advanced software work by allowing more files to be open, I'm not sure if Windows requires it though. Speaking of Windows, your machine CAN RUN WINDOWS. Version 1.01 (the first public release) will run on your machine, although I recommend a monochrome composite monitor instead of a color monitor as the different color will be better on your eyes than the black and white environment of Windows on CGA. In order to use Windows with color, you must use at least an EGA.

[@CattoRayTube]

I like your PTC set! It's nice to see you :) your lighting of your blue table scene at the end is super cool too.

[@TechTangents]

I'm afraid I don't know what PTC stands for and the acronym gets used a lot so I couldn't easily find a reference to it in respect to video production. For the lighting, I'm not sure if you mean the close up monitor shot or the full computer shot when trying the math game. The monitor shot took a lot of effort because the 5153 is practically a mirror. The usual light diffusion layer on CRTs was omitted on them for some reason. It was also difficult to keep the lights from reflecting on the screen. So I had to raise them up about 3ft more than normal. For the full computer shot I want to try something a little different and lowered the camera more the usual. That was the same lighting setup as the monitor show.

[@ropersonline]

AkBKukU People who don't explain their acronyms are a Pain in The Cooch.

[@CattoRayTube]

PTC = piece to camera, sorry. Yeah, the game scene - the darkness behind was a good way to highlight the system and the system only, especially given the likely limited space you had available on your desk. :)

[@thomasandrews9355]

I went with the CF version of this and it's awesome! I got it for like $40 with a premade card. Card came with 6.22.

[@jaydeniemuth9366]

Well made video, you've come a long way since your first videos. Hope to see more from you.

[@troyquigg4411]

FDISK /MBR does not "zero out the boot sector" or erase the partition. It rewrites the Master Boot Record (hence MBR). It is a good step to make the CF card bootable, but it wasn't clearing out your partition table in this case. Also, FDISK in DOS 6.22 (maybe a few versions sooner) can delete Non DOS partitions.

[@MrWaalkman]

We have to use a an old digital camera to format the CF cards for our Motoman robot, the "modern" version of FAT16 simply won't work. It may be because formatting to FAT16 on your PC really formats it to FAT16B.

[@TheFakeVIP]

I've seen modern classic's video on these, they're really cool.

[@xjr358]

OMG Thanks! fdisk /mbr works like a charm! Now I'm able to boot up dos 5.0 at my Toshiba T1200 laptop from CF!

[@JarrodCoombes]

Oh, now I know what /MBR does, and the bits about zeroing out the first sector is a great tip. Personally I run MS-DOS 5 on my 5150, 5160 and 5140 machines. I find DOS 3.3 to be a bit too archaic, though all my machines are 512kb or better. Also, I might have a RAM card for a 5150/5160 you can have if you like. Let me know, you;ve got my email.

[@Keith1212]

Thanks! The fdisk /mbr was my problem. Also on my Commodore PC-10 with an 8088 cpu and 640kb ram I was able to format the card using fdisk on dos 5 as well as use the installer on dos 5 with no hiccups. works great now!

[@SamGallagher]

Thanks so much for this video. It would've been so painful to get everything going otherwise, so really, thank you!

[@ropersonline]

Especially if there's going to be a CF-only version of the adapter, JD/monotech guy should preferably make one with a custom bracket that has a slot in it and the compact flash reader sat right behind it, so the card would be externally accessible w/o having to open the case. Of course, some might consider that a disadvantage too. YMMV. Caveat emptor.

[@nztdm]

Monotech guy here! If there's enough demand, I may make a custom bracket one. For now, I've just finished testing phase of a new, extra small design: www.ebay.com/itm/332860782711

[@BollingHolt]

Back in 1991 I got a 40 meg IDE hard card for Christmas to go in my Amstrad PC1512DD. I had the same trouble trying to get DOS 3.2 to work on it. The solution from the company who sold the hard card was to upgrade to DOS 3.3. There must be something 3.2 that makes it fickle with IDE drives.

[@DrewberTravels]

11:53 Ahhh... what a beautiful moire pattern.

[@pelgervampireduck]

I remember running dos 6.22 on a no hard disk XT with two 360k floppy drives. I made the "custom" disks myself, I basically made a 1.44 boot disk and then divided it to 4 360k disks. the first one booted and had some stuff like fdisk, format, xcopy, and the other disks had the rest of the utilities like edit, scandisk, and stuff like that. it worked fine, but 3.3 was better for that machine because it took only 2 floppies.

[@eduardoavila646]

Would the 6.22 run well in there? I never used dos in such old hardware. What about freedos? I've had way more compatibility with it somehow. And with newer hardware it also worked better.

[@johnuser5162]

If DOS 5 didnt work, do you think 6.22 would work?

[@eduardoavila646]

John User I didnt see it not working. From what i saw his disk was bad. Why use irony?

[@BackForwardPunch]

It said it was out of memory.

[@eduardoavila646]

BackForwardPunch Wasnt that for the game he installed? Well, i was asking about the processor itself anyway, ram you can upgrade.

[@CptJistuce]

@@BackForwardPunch Technically, DOSSHELL and EDIT didn't work. DOS itself worked just fine. That said, those two utilities are enough to demonstrate that MS-DOS 5 assumes it is running on something with more than 256K of RAM. I'd wager the official system requirements specify >256K systems.

[@DarkMettaur]

thank you i was ready to cry and die thank you thank you thank you oh my god that little executable saved my life. i botched up a preinstalled dos install on a cf card and formatted it in windows as FAT thinking the XT-IDE adapter wouldn't care but it just refused to read the card. i was ripping out my hair and ready to screamcry.

[@ropersonline]

9:11 Never forget: The reason the in-installer format fails is probably because it tries to quick-format (format /q) the drive, which probably can't work. Or at least that's my guess.

[@rolandmetivier4437]

12:36 I remember doing times tables when I was a wee youngster >_>

[@AlaricHeiss]

Just got a card like this for my IBM PS/2 Model 25. I was hoping to copy some ancient files from the machine's old SCSI hard drive onto the XT-IDE card, but the system will only see either the SCSI or the XTIDE, not both at once. Any suggestions to get both online at once? The SCSI connects through a controller card that I assume has its own BIOS that's overriding the XTIDE. No matter which order I slot in the cards, if the SCSI is present it takes priority.

[@videosdogara]

Hey man, your channel is amazing.

[@vapour_cs658]

I fucking love the style of this video, and what your turning into. Keep it up!!

Extremely beautiful

[@ig33ku]

Who is that handsome devil?

[@JessicaFEREM]

would this combo work if you added a CF to SD adapter or do you need a CF card?

[@dLLund]

seems like adding additional ram on the same card would be a natural. thank you for posting. take care & stay safe, from the plague-infested year 2020.

[@ButilkaRomm]

Which is highest version of ms-dos that can run on 8086?

[@Hawkeye0918]

Helped a ton with getting this working! Thanks!

[@markwebber526]

Are 16 bit ISA slots backwards compatible for 8 bit XT MFM- and RLL-encoded drive cards? Nobody is really saying much except theories about disabling the IDE channels or you have to use a 16 bit card.

[@ropersonline]

7:29 is kinda freaky: Same command entered twice, but it only works the second time. Wrong disk in drive?

[@rawr51919]

Or even the uploader forgot to insert the disk in. A cls command should fix that in a jiffy.

[@Thrakus]

I have a ibm 5150 , Do i need Slot 8 Support and what is Slot 8 Support? All i can find is if you have a 5160 you need it.

[@ArisAlamanos]

Isn't it "autoexec.bat" ???

[@ChrisLinstid]

It might help to use the right names for the characters you're talking about since DOS uses backslash as its path separator. / = slash \ = backslash

[@Subgunman]

Will these work in clone 286 machines?

[@ReneWennekes]

I have a XT-IDE Rev 4.1. is it possible to flash it on a PIII 500MHZ with a ISA slot? En has someone a tutorial about flashing this card. It has 2x 8-dip switches ......

[@EpicLPer]

Finally we see the man behind the camera. Thought you'd more look like Druaga just going by the voice tho :D

[@martijnklerks]

EpicLPer you have heard this before but... you are everywhere... or we just like the same stuff

[@ropersonline]

0:03 "This computer was intended to be used mostly with one or two floppy drives." Emphasis on mostly. Or maybe not even that. There's some circumstantial evidence IBM actually expected to sell more 5150s in the driveless (compact cassette storage only) configuration.

[@TechTangents]

I'm aware of the speculation on this(which is why I was careful with my choice of words). But I don't think I would ever believe IBM thought they would sell mostly floppy free 5150s. Where is the IBM brand cassette player in that case? There's no way IBM would have missed out on selling that as well. Most computers at that time had begun including floppy drives and the high price of the 5150 compared to other computers clearly put it out of the "budget" computer market.

[@ropersonline]

That's the thing: The $1,565 configuration relied on the assumption that people would use TV sets and cassette recorders they already had in the home. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC#cite_ref-sanger19850805_43-3 IBM didn't make TV sets or composite monitors either, and didn't even sell an IBM CGA (digital RGB) monitor until two years later, even though the $1,565 configuration had a CGA card with composite and digital RGB outputs. On pricing, Wikipedia says: > The company intentionally set prices for it and other configurations that were comparable to those of Apple and other rivals; what Dan Bricklin described as "pretty competitive" pricing surprised him and other Software Arts employees. One analyst stated that IBM "has taken the gloves off", while the company said "we suggest [the PC's price] invites comparison". That was at release though. IBM were slow to reduce prices, and soon undercut. Plus, a cassette software ecosystem never evolved for the 5150, so nobody wanted a 5150 w/o a floppy. N.B.: In the UK, floppy drives were still more of an expensive luxury in 1981, and cassette-based home computers continued to be popular throughout the eighties. But if IBM had been aiming for that market, they never got cheap enough for Europe.

[@1337Shockwav3]

Why no MSDOS 2.x? Gotta have to love FAT12 formated HDD partitions these days (inserting the CF card into a modern Windows OS kills the partition tables because it incorrectly thinks of it as a broken floppy).

[@thereallantesh]

I'm definitely enjoying watching your videos on the 5150, but wow this model seems like a lot of hassle for not much reward. This seems like one of those times where the journey is the reward itself, because I think once you are done with all the upgrades to 5150 it will end up just sitting on a shelf as a nice conversation piece. Still the journey itself is worth it. For something more usable though I think a 286 or 386 would make a lot more sense.

[@drakepirate]

I was able to install MS-DOS 6.22 at my IBM5160 256Kb/VGA512K (No floppies just with a CF and VirtualBox) but not, DOS 3.30. Crazy right?

[@intel386DX]

what about IRQ setting?

[@yoshi314]

that is an open hardware design? now that's nice to see.

[@rawr51919]

IBM thought this far into the future when they developed the 5150, for sure.

[@rallyscoot]

Why not buying an ISA RAM backfill board to get 640KB memory..

[@rafirosin]

Everything is out of stock. Now, how will I ever boot my old IBM 5155 that I just got?😢

[@joshuawalker7054]

Freedos wasn't an option?

[@CompComp]

Where did you get that 3.25" media dashboard thing? I could really use one with ide and can't find it anywhere.

[@IanC14]

Yeah that thing is awesome.

[@jrherita]

Should have gotten an Amiga... j/k - great video! cool to see an IDE card for these old machines!

[@GEORGE-jf2vz]

I would add Prompt=$p$G in the autoexec.bat so the prompt tells you which directory you are in.

[@sonicunleashedfan124]

Finally, his face is revealed on his channel!

[@kidkool27]

He's shown his face many times before

[@HuntersMoon78]

Holy crap, I thought I had problems with my Gotek and getting it configured on an Atari ST

[@stogie28]

cool bass

[@ropersonline]

4:54 Regarding the recommendation of MS-DOS: Have you at all tried FreeDOS? EDIT: Apparently that would require a 640K RAM backfill card: web.archive.org/web/20171217002943if_/wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Hardware_compatibility > "FreeDOS should run on all PC hardware, even the IBM PC-XT and systems with as little as 640k memory." (The wiki was offline as of this writing, hence the Wayback Machine link.)

[@laharl2k]

Hey, not that i need it but maybe it would be wise to make an image of the OS freshly installed just in case people need it. Maybe upload it to google drive or to some of the usual abandomware sites.

[@garthhowe297]

Thanks.... very helpful, as I am installing one of these tomorrow (or attempting to). lol

[@josephnealescratchcards]

Awesome video as always

[@JimLeonard]

Great info on partitioning, but major fail on mistyping autoexec.bat (and not noticing it didn't even save.) You might want to redo that portion of the video and upload a new version, otherwise a lot of people are going to get frustrated following this.

[@TechTangents]

I accidentally hit ctrl-c in the video, noticed and went back and fixed it, but my camera stopped recording after the directory listing. That head on shot on the 5153 took a long time to get lit correctly and angled just right and I didn't want to try and re-create it when I found out in editing. I should have put an on screen note mentioning that. I can add it to the description and the pinned comment as a note that was a mistake. Unfortunately with how youtube works with promoting videos having to pull down a video an put it back up is one of the last things you want to do. You aren't allowed to re-upload an edited version to the same video, so you would have to upload it all over again. Most people will have already watched it who are subscribed and won't want to watch it again. So it won't get a lot of people who initially watch it. Then the youtube algorithms will see that as the video sucking and it will never recommend it.

[@JimLeonard]

You can always keep it in your back pocket as a "I'll redo this in a year if I run out of ideas" project. Don't get discouraged, keep up the good work!

[@fnjesusfreak]

You need more than 256K for dosshell. Been there. (BTW, I've got a good rip of PC DOS 5.00.1?)

[@kcinplatinumgaming2598]

Ha ha you need more than 256k run anything !!

[@fnjesusfreak]

Been there. Had a PCjr and a 5160 both with 256K, and the 5160 had a MDPA.

[@CreamPolo]

Good old days :))))

[@spy.re-drobe20]

lol you cannot do much with just 250kb of memory, cause usually 1mb is the base-line if you want to run anything 'useful'. also I like the fact that you had a multiply and divide software exclusively for the jurassic era its looked pretty neat.

[@tomle6450]

Soooooo, can you put a ssd in it?

[@rawr51919]

Answer: Very much yes.

[@TotemSP2]

Wait, Monotech? The CUBE guys?

[@djdjukic]

Nice! but yeah, in the video, you didn't save the "autoexe".bat, you hit ^C not ^Z, which you perhaps fixed post-recording, and then named it properly? I just tested PC-DOS 2.0, 3.0 and 3.3 and they sure don't autoexec anything other than, well, autoexec.bat :)

[@TechTangents]

I'll have to go back and double check. But with it missing the "c" DOS still knew where all the utilities were and printed the version. This was with MS-DOS, IBM's DOS wouldn't install at all. I'm not a DOS "expert" and I don't play around with virtual machines like a lot of people do, I just use hardware. So my DOS exposure has been limited.

[@JarrodCoombes]

Well you only had one folder on there, C:\DOS. It is possible that MS-DOS dumps that in the path variable by default. I am not sure about this, it's been a while since I played with DOS 3.3. Alternatively you might be talking about the utilities that are internal to command.com (ver is an example of this, as is DIR). If you type "echo %path%" it should show you the path, or you can just type "path" I forget which would work on DOS 3.

[@ZeroHourProductions407]

I think this is the first time I'd seen your face on camera. Impressive. :D

[@IanC14]

He's popped up once or twice on camera before.

[@Eo_Tunun]

Are you aware of the software archive at archive.org? (I bet you are, but I better ask, I thought.)

[@awesomenokes]

Wasn't expecting the Red Ranger from the Turbo Power Rangers Movie at 3:50

[@Krivulda]

XT without roaring hard drive is like week without Sunday... :)

[@rawr51919]

Or even an IDE SSD.

[@MattIsTheCat]

It may be too late to say this, and you may have already tried this, but you should run the 1983 3D DOS game Battlezone.

[@Willyw72]

Lotus 123 version 1.0A DOS minimum RAM 192KB

[@jangelelcangry]

But how people would say on 1993: But can it run Doom?

[@rawr51919]

That I'll leave to Akbkuku to figure out.

[@IanC14]

Doom needs a 386 at least

[@smallmoneysalvia]

Who’s the dude on screen? Where’s druaga1? How did you sync druaga1’s voice so well with this guy’s mouth? How many more questions like this can I get away with before the joke is drawn out too long?

[@Bewefau]

You're younger then I though You'd be but I'm trying to get into this stuff myself. Hard to get a decent priced IBM PC right now :( sucks when your in a small town.

[@kd1s]

Actually I went a different way. I had the NEC V20 CPU in my XT. And a Seagate ST220 hard drive 20MB on that baby. And now I have a Win98 Virtual Machine in order to play SimCity 2000. Yeah I know.

[@Felecc]

3:50 Techmoan time :DDDD

[@olik136]

I don't know how I could get so old without knowing that DOS stands for "disc operating system"....

[@ArjanvanVught]

An IBM PC must run PC-DOS not the other DOS ;-)

[@memadmax69]

Sweet, so wheres the SATA to ISA card lol

[@sarreqteryx]

does everyone just have something against FreeDOS? it is supposed to run on the 5150

[@IanC14]

Eh, some people want to be as period correct as possible I guess.

[@medes5597]

Needs 640k minimum of RAM. I checked.

[@LiviuDragon]

you can install windows 3.1

[@lepompier132]

Find an extension card that has 256Kb of RAM so you can have 512Kb unless you can upgrade the RAM on the motherboard.

[@rawr51919]

Both would be even better, tbh.

[@kooky216]

vo is fine

[@SilentServiceCode]

autoexec.bat not autoexe

[@zboy303]

More!

[@Nitro_0999]

This is way too complicated for my brain. I'm just glad I don't need to deal with dos