THE "DOUBLE DISK" FLOPPY BOOT PROCEDURE FOR OS2 2.0

by Philip D. Clyde

This file describes the use of BOTH floppy drives to boot OS2 2.0 GA.

This file is dedicated with gratitude to Morton F. Kaplon, whose file
BOOTDI.304 provided the information necessary to create this procedure.

I am taking the liberty of paraphrasing that information in order to provide
complete information to those without access to his original posting.

This solution arose from the fact that although I used a new, undamaged
5.25" floppy with no bad sectors I was still unable to fit all the necessary files
onto the disk. While unsuccessfully experimenting with omitting various files it
occurred to me that, since CONFIG.SYS under OS2 combines the functions of the DOS
versions of CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, and since the LIBPATH statement occurs
fairly early in the file, it might therefore be possible to store all of the
Dynamic Link Library ( *.DLL) files on the B: drive and use the LIBPATH
statement to tell the system that they are on Drive B.

The procedure first involves copying the files SYSINSTX.COM, OS2LDR.MSG,
OS2LDR, and OS2KRNLI from the OS2 installation disk to the C: drive. The file OS2KRNLI
should be renamed OS2KRNL, by either copying to the new filename or renaming the file.
The command "SYSINSTX A:" will then transfer the hidden system file OS2BOOT to a
formatted floppy disk in the A drive. It will also create the hidden file EA DATA.SF
on the floppy. The three files OS2LDR.MSG, OS2LDR, and OS2KRNL are the only files
which must be copied from the OS2 installation disk. The rest of the necessary files
are all on disk 1 of the original OS2 disks, and should be copied to a formatted disk
in drive B if they have the extension *.dll. Otherwise they should be copied to drive A.
There are only a couple of exceptions which, I will discuss later.

The Directory listings showing the locations of all necessary files are shown below.

DIR Listing Drive A:

Volume in drive A is BOOTDISK1
Volume Serial Number is 64BF-7415
Directory of A:\

OS2KRNL 716044 03-30-92 12:00p
OS2LDR 32256 03-30-92 12:00p
OS2LDR MSG 8440 03-30-92 12:00p
CMD EXE 87552 03-30-92 12:00p
OS2DASD DMD 31994 03-30-92 12:00p
COUNTRY SYS 24604 03-30-92 12:00p
CLOCK01 SYS 3666 03-30-92 12:00p
DOS SYS 1142 03-30-92 12:00p
CONFIG SYS 551 06-13-92 9:13a
IBM1FLPY ADD 24026 03-30-92 12:00p
IBM2FLPY ADD 12997 03-30-92 12:00p
IBM2ADSK ADD 10724 03-30-92 12:00p
HARDERR EXE 14436 03-30-92 12:00p
IBM1S506 ADD 12908 03-30-92 12:00p
IBMINT13 I13 9564 03-30-92 12:00p
KBD01 SYS 29013 03-30-92 12:00p
KEYBOARD DCP 5177 03-30-92 12:00p
PRINT01 SYS 8934 03-30-92 12:00p
SCREEN01 SYS 1441 03-30-92 12:00p
SYSINST1 EXE 4224 03-30-92 12:00p
SYSLEVEL OS2 169 03-30-92 12:00p
CHKDSK COM 68656 03-30-92 12:00p
IBM2SCSI ADD 15780 03-30-92 12:00p
23 file(s) 1124298 bytes
67584 bytes free

Directory listing Drive B:

Volume in drive B is BOOTDISK2
Directory of B:\DLL

. 06-12-92 8:10p
.. 06-12-92 8:10p
DOSCALL1 DLL 87884 03-30-92 12:00p
SESMGR DLL 31256 03-30-92 12:00p
NPXEMLTR DLL 25280 03-30-92 12:00p
ANSICALL DLL 438 03-30-92 12:00p
BKSCALLS DLL 401 03-30-92 12:00p
BMSCALLS DLL 398 03-30-92 12:00p
BVHINIT DLL 9203 03-30-92 12:00p
BVSCALLS DLL 454 03-30-92 12:00p
OS2CHAR DLL 56320 03-30-92 12:00p
VIOCALLS DLL 1825 03-30-92 12:00p
QUECALLS DLL 14994 03-30-92 12:00p
KBDCALLS DLL 858 03-30-92 12:00p
NAMPIPES DLL 711 03-30-92 12:00p
NLS DLL 465 03-30-92 12:00p
MOUCALLS DLL 1010 03-30-92 12:00p
MSG DLL 477 03-30-92 12:00p
OSO001 MSG 171340 03-30-92 12:00p
OSO001H MSG 237111 03-30-92 12:00p
20 file(s) 640425 bytes
801792 bytes free

I created the directory B:\DLL simply out of neatness.
It probably wasn't absolutely necessary to do so.
All these files appear to be necessary with a few exceptions.
The files OS001.MSG and OS001H.MSG are error message files that the system
uses to tell you what is going on. I copied them from the C:\OS2\SYSTEM
subdirectory when the system informed me that it couldn't find them. I put
them on the B drive because the system was able to boot without them but
generated a cryptic error message saying that it couldn't find them
several times before finally going to the A:> prompt.

There are three files, IBM2ADSK.ADD, IBM2FLOPPY.ADD, and IBM2SCSI.ADD
which I added because the system said that it couldn't find them although to
the best of my knowledge they are supposed to be for PS2 machines only.
Not only did the system ask for them but the system itself wrote the BASEDEV=
statements for them into CONFIG.SYS. There appears to be quite a bit going on
behind the scenes. There are also two hidden files that the system has placed
on BOTH floppy disks. WP ROOT.SF appears to be the same on both disks
but EA DATA.SF has different file sizes on each disk.

I would like to stress that my machine DID BOOT without
those three files and without the *.MSG files but since it wanted them. . .
Anyway I prefer NOT to see error messages when a new operating system is
booting although these messages did NOT cause the PAUSEONERROR line in
CONFIG.SYS to wait for input (which by the way is what it is there for;
it works like the DOS PAUSE command if anything in CONFIG.SYS generates
an error, which gives you time to read the message).

The following is a listing of my CONFI.SYS file as it appears on drive A.


buffers=32
iopl=yes
memman=noswap
protshell=sysinst1.exe
set os2_shell=cmd.exe
diskcache=64,LW
protectonly=yes
libpath=.;\;b:\dll;
rem ifs=hpfs.ifs /c:64
pauseonerror=yes
codepage=850
devinfo=kbd,us,keyboard.dcp
rem devinfo=scr,ega,vtbl850.dcp
device=\dos.sys
rem device=\mouse.sys
set path=.:\;b:\dll
set dpath=\;b:\dll
set keys=on
basedev=print01.sys
basedev=ibm1flpy.add
basedev=ibm1s506.add
basedev=ibm2flpy.add
basedev=ibm2adsk.add
basedev=ibm2scsi.add
basedev=ibmint13.i13
basedev=os2dasd.dmd
rem device=\testcfg.sys

You will need to copy CONFIG.SYS from the installation disk and edit it to
more or less resemble the above. If you set PAUSEONERROR=YES the system will
tell you if you are making any mistakes or if this configuration is
unsuitable for your machine.

CHKDSK.COM is of course not necessary to boot the machine but it is the most
common reason that I can think of to boot from a floppy as CHKDSK.COM will
NOT work on the drive you booted from. I am going to follow Mr. Kaplon's
example and include a small text editor for fixing files as well as putting
copies of CONFIG.SYS (the hard disk version) and OS2.INI in a separate
directory in case of disaster. I do not like the fact that the MAKEINI.EXE
utility wipes out all customization of the Desktop including and most especially
printer installation. A copy of OS2.INI would eliminate the need for this
extreme step. There is certainly room as there are almost 860 combined kilobytes
free on the two disks.

A last word:
I only have access to my own machine, which is a 386/33 clone (Micro Generation)
with only 4 megs of RAM (so far). I therefore cannot guarantee that this procedure
will work on any other machine, simply because I have never been able to test it.
It does, however, work quite well on my machine.

I welcome comments or questions. My Compuserve I.D. # is 76507,1153.
My AOL screen name is Philip5130. Good Luck!