Many things happened, described in my post in vogons forum (https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t= … p;start=60)

But to resume, now :

- I can access to bios
- the password is gone (thanks to this method, it’s also that who get me access to bios : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4dMmZsG0is)
- the boot is still very long regardless of the modifications made in bios (boot order, unused things desactivated etc…)

The next thing I will try : use the CF card adaptor you were talking before. Even if it doesn’t make the boot faster, it will be more quiet which is appreciated. I will receive the adaptor in a few days

EDIT : and... CF card changed nothing to low boot lol... but writing and reading is faster, and it's silent

You can probably use the GURB4DOS method mentioned above to boot from a floppy image. If the BIOS tool insists on writing directly to a floppy, it will usually work to use IMDisk to create a virtual floppy drive that it can write instead of a real one. (Avoid the similarly named IMDisk Toolkit which I think is something else.) Then you can hopefully use that disk image for booting the BIOS utility.

After more investigations, I can confirm that the password is not related to the HDD, because it appears (after 2:40) even if the hdd2 is unplugged.

I made a post here : https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=1332085#p1332085

It’s not really 5min but yea it’s long… exactly 2:40 before asking the password, there is a video of it on my post on vogons forum.

Thank’s for the linux command for erase the password ! I have to try that ! Even if it succeed and waiting is still here, this would be cool because this password is very annoying…

I never could enter to the bios even after trying a lot of keys, and if I press too keys it beeps continuously and I have to reboot with power button to make it stop…

According to someone in the vogon forum, there is probably a problem with the bios and I am trying to reflash it but I can’t do it because it wants a diskette drive which I don’t have.

For win98, when I tried it, it kicked me to dos 2 second after launching win98/setup.exe maybe I can’t install it on hdd2 from hdd2 ? But now I’m not sure I want to install it because I figured out how to make us sticks working in ms dos and that was the main raison for installing win98. This computer is essentially for adlibtracker2 so I need only ms dos / freedos but if win98 could make it easyer to fix the bios, boot or password problem then I would reconsidering installing it.

Waiting 5 minutes before the boot process even starts seems very abnormal. Maybe it has something to do with using the CD compartment for the boot drive. Maybe the BIOS waits 5 min for a response from the (nonexistant) hard drive in the regular HDD compartment, and then gives up.

The password seems like it's maybe the HDD password. You could try erasing the HDD password. According to this SuperUser post you can issue the following command from a Linux computer:
hdparm --security-disable PWD /dev/sdb
This has an added complication that it needs access to send raw ATA commands to the HDD, which the USB adapter may or may not support. But even if you succeed with this I suspect it will still wait 5 minutes and just not ask for the PW.

Also, have you tried entering the laptop's BIOS to look for any relevant settings there. You'd just need to figure out what keys to press/hold when it powers on.

There's probably something stopping you from starting the installation from FreeDOS. Something that should probably work for installing Win98 is the following: Copy the win98 folder from the install CD to the hdd. Then use the floppy.img method above to boot a Win98 boot disk. This should almost be guaranteed to work for starting the installation. When the installation asks for the source for the install files, give c:\win98. The installation will probably overwrite the bootlace bootstrap, but that's fine because you can now at least boot Windows 98.

If you get that working in principle, I'd then look into dual booting if you want that, and also possibly using 98lite to install Windows 98 without IE and the new Windows 98 file explorer shell, if that's something you'd want for performance.

I read again your first response and the CF card solution would maybe make the boot faster (even if the waiting is before the boot ?) but how to find a CF to IDE/other connection for hdd1 adaptor which will fit on the 530CDT ? It seems hard to find with some research

I have an other problem : when booting, it always launch the installer of freedos, I can't start freedos without launching the installer, it's quite annoying. I tried with the kernel.sys file I have in the root directory and with the kernel.sys which is inside the dos-x86 folder, but both starts the installer and I have to select "return to dos" from the installer for enter dos.

And, before the boot of grub4dos, it is also verrrry long (close to 5min) before it ask password, and then it start after this **** password is entered. This problem can't be resolved I suppose ? It make it not good for live

AT2 seems to work good but I had to enable 1 for opl3 latency in AT2 config.ini file.

Grub4dos works ! And I installed Freedos ! Yea thank you !

My first plan was to install win98 just because the usb works better in it and for file exchanges for Adlib tracker 2. I tried to install it from Freedos, but it didn't work. I launched win98/setup.exe but it stop just after the begining and I'm back to freedos.

Is it because I have only one HDD where I want to do all ? I'm on Freedos on it and I'm trying to install win98 on it so maybe it can't work ? And also it's a FAT16 freedos partition and I read win98 don't like FAT16.

Is it possible/better to install win98 directly from grub4dos ? I also tried to access the usb drive from grub4dos and from freedos, no success, the usb stick doesn't light up...

I could also disconnect the disk, put adlibtracker2 on it, and run it from freedos (is this ok?). But having to disconnect the disk and connect it each time I need to transfer files that will be not very good. But yea it's basically just for AT2 (this one should have OPL3) and also fast tracker 2 if it works

Bootlace only works with Linux, and DOS/Win9x.

Thank you very much, I will test it when I will have some time. Bootlace can be used on Mac OS or is it better to use it on linux ?

That looks reasonable. Sometimes the BIOS on old computers have trouble using a HDD on the IDE channel normally used for a CD drive. The IDE hardware can handle it, but the BIOS doesn't set it up right. It assumes channel x is always a CD drive...

Something you can try is GRUB4DOS which sometimes works like magic.
Download here: https://github.com/chenall/grub4dos/releases
Get the 0.4.6a or maybe some older version that's not marked UEFI. Then to prepare the disk, use the "bootlace.com" utility. Despite what it looks like with the .com extension, it also runs under Linux. Just
chmod +x bootlace.com
sudo ./bootlace.com /dev/sdX
Also copy the grldr file onto the filesystem.

If it works, you should end up in a grub like menu. You can then use this for chainloading various things. For example for DOS:
find --set-root /io.sys
chainloader /io.sys
or whatever the equivalent is for FreeDOS.

Or for a floppy image:
find --set-root /floppy.img
map --mem /floppy.img (fd0)
map --hook
rootnoverify (fd0)
chainloader (fd0)+1

You can also put these in a menu.lst file to get a menu, for example:

title boot DOS
find --set-root /io.sys
chainloader /io.sys

title boot floppy.img
find --set-root /floppy.img
map --mem /floppy.img (fd0)
map --hook
rootnoverify (fd0)
chainloader (fd0)+1

I also remember finding a program that rescans the IDE bus for drives, for those cases when the BIOS got it wrong. I'll see if I can dig up the name/find the file for it.

Hello,

Sorry I didn’t see your message. Thank’s for your reply !

Yes there is no cd rom drive, it’s because the emplacement for cd rom drive can also be used by a hdd. And bad luck I have an hdd, not a cd rom drive !

This is this hdd which I was talking about. And I just discovered that I have no other hdd… the emplacement for’the main hdd is… empty…

Because it said « no system disk » when this secondary hdd was inside, and nothing when it wasn’t inside made me think that it try to boot on this hdd. The message was « disque non système » in french it means it’s not a system disk, not that there is no disk, just to be clear.

I bought an ide to usb adaptor and connected this secondary hdd to my mac pro computer. I tried several things which didn’t work, then I tried from a linux computer. This is what I did :
sudo parted /dev/sdX mklabel msdos
sudo parted /dev/sdX mkpart primary fat16 1MiB 100%
sudo mkfs.fat -F16 /dev/sdX1
sudo parted /dev/sdX set 1 boot on

And then I copied the content of freedos.img in the disk and the content of win98se.img in a folder (for no conflict between freedos boot and win98). The plan was ro boot in freedos and then cd to win98 folder and install it from there. I did that after watching a tutorial which was using usb keys for boot, 1 for freedos boot and the other for win98. But in my case I can’t use usb.

I can’t use usb because I can’t enter to bios, I tried everything, including keys which are marked to work with this model. I can’t go to the bios so I put all the files in the hdd.

After starting the toshiba, it ask me a password (it always did that… very annoying) which I have so it says « password ok, starting the system… » and nothing, cursor blinking. I let it like that long time but nothing happened. The message « no system disk » is gone so I presume it tries now to boot on the hdd, but it don’t work…

First of all, are you there's no CD drive? It's supposed to be on the right side - if not, you'd see a hole where the drive was.

As for getting this thing to boot. The way I usually get this kind of computer to boot is by putting files externally on the HDD, and booting off of that, no reliance on floppies or CDs.

You have two options for this:
1) Get a USB to IDE caddy, and plug in the HDD into it.
2) Get a CF card and a CF to IDE adapter. This lets you use a CD memory card as a HDD. This will often make it boot faster, and be more quiet. (Unless you have nostalgia attached to the clicking HDD noise. ) This also make it easy to read the card with a standard memory card reader for transferring files in and out.

From there, there are few details but you need to for example attach the drive to a virtual machine, or image it somehow to the same effect. Then boot a DOS boot disk and do a command like "sys a:". Copy the install.exe and the win98 folder from the Win98 CD to the CF card. With any luck, it should now be possible to insert the CF card, through the HDD adapter, to the laptop and boot it. Now you should be able to type install to start the installation.

There are some details I'm glossing over, and I would love to try to help you get it running.

Sorry for this necro post, but I get a toshiba tecra 530 cdt. On startup it says : no system disk. If I remove the 2GB disk it says insert a disk. I may need to install win98 but the problem is there is no cd drive and I think no floppy drive too. I am searching a PCMCIA cd drive or one which can work with the tecra 530 cdt.
Do you know if some other cd drive can work or not ? I read somewhere that recent cd drive can work with a PCMCIA adaptor. Is it true ?

Thanks for your contribution!