Whats the best DOS upgrade path?

[Phil Nelson]

In article <39457 at linus.UUCP| mhg at mitre-bedford.ARPA (Granoff) writes:
|After a total mishap and 98% recovery, I am now ready to try and
|upgrade the DOS on my PC.
|
|I am currently at AT&T MS-DOS 2.11.  I have an AT&T 6300, 640KB
|memory, 20MB Seagate ST225 hard disk, 1 floppy, AT&T monochrome
|monitor.
|
|As I understand it, I cannot use SYS to upgrade DOS from 2.x to 3.x
|because 3.x is bigger.  I must reformat.  (Once I get to, say 3.1, I
|could then use SYS to go to 3.2 without formatting, right?)
|
You are correct, you cannot go from 2.x to 3.x with sys, I havn't tried
3.1 to 3.2, it should work.

|I have read quite a bit lately (here, in fact) that BACKUP/RESTORE
|between DOS versions doesn't work.  Whether that's true or not (is
|it?), I am not planning on using DOS BACKUP and RESTORE.  I got a copy
|of FastBack+, which I am told by others, works just fine on AT&Ts.
|Any comments?  Will I be able to read FastBack+-written disks (under
|DOS 2.11) under DOS 3.x?
|

You are correct, BACKUP/RESTORE will not work between 2.11 and 3.1, unless
you have fewer than 10 backup volumes and good luck. I tried it once, they
changed the volume number storage from BCD to binary. I also tried that
other program you mentioned, about a year ago. It did not work at all on
my AT&T, something to do with the floppy, I am told. I gave it away to
someone with a true blue, where it seemed to work well, if a bit frantically.
Probably they have fixed this problem, I advise you to make very sure before
buying. I use Intelligent Backup, by Sterling Software.

|Since I will have to reformat, what is the exact procedure?  I think I
|know, but I would like to check it out before I start:
|
|     1. DOS BACKUP my FastBack+ directory, to RESTORE later onto 3.x
|        disk, rather than reinstall it from scratch.

------ Just DOS COPY your whatever directory to the floppy, although
       you could probably get away with BACKUP here, why bother?

|     2. Low level format with interleave factor 3.

------ If you have an extra hour or so, I suggest you experiment with
       Spintest, which just went by in comp.binaries.ibm.pc, I think.
       Interleave
       3 might be too fast. (I think it's OK, though, for the Seagate)

|     3. FDISK to create partition.
------don't forget to boot on the new OS disk and format...
|     4. SYS to copy 3.x system.
------if you format with /s you won't need this.
|     5. DOS 3.x RESTORE of FastBack+ directory.
------just MakeDir and copy to it from the floppy...
|     6. FastBack+ restore (all but DOS 2.11 stuff)
------make sure your whatever backup program is not set to automatically
      overwrite existing files on restore.
|
|Right??  Will I be able to run DOS 3.x RESTORE on DOS 2.11 BACKUP
|disks????
|
sort of (see above).

|Next, I can go to either AT&T MS-DOS 3.1 or AT&T MS-DOS 3.2.  Which
|should I use?  Does it matter?  I had heard that there was a problem
|under PC DOS 3.2 in reading 2.x disks?  Is this the case?  Is this the
|case with AT&T MS-DOS 3.2?
|
I could tell you a story about 3.1, terms for upgrade to 3.2, and my
6300+, but maybe I had better not... the end result was, after a great
deal of wasted time, I am mad at my own company's PC support group,
AT&T's PC support group, Microsoft's support group (or should I say
robot?), and my clock still does not keep good time. I reset it every
few days, a minor aggravation compared with trying to get it fixed.
The tell me I'm the only one with this problem, so maybe I'm doin' it
wrong :-). I suppose if I were buying now, knowing what I know, I would
buy 3.2, which, I hope, will either keep the correct time, or can be
patched to do so (of of course, I don't know if any of this applies to
your 6300, my problem is with the 6300+).

|What am I forgetting?  Tell me.

I hope I have, and trust someone will correct me where I have erred.

|
|Thanks for the information.

You're quite welcome

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