How to create a DOS boot floppy

W. Durfee, Oct-01

OK, so your fancy new Pentium 7, 20 GHz computer running Windows 2010 can't talk to your Stamp board over the parallel port. No need to panic. All you need to do is make a floppy disk that has a DOS boot image and stamp.exe on it. Turn off your computer, place the floppy in the drive, turn on your computer and you will boot up into good friendly old DOS. At the C:> prompt, type "stamp.exe" and you are on your way.

Here's how to make a DOS 5.0 boot disk:

  1. Download the DOS boot image contained in file DOS_5_0.exe (640 KB)
  2. Download the file stamp.exe (11 KB)
  3. Insert a new, formatted 1.44 MB floppy into your floppy drive
  4. Double-click on DOS 5.0.exe which will create the floppy image.
  5. Copy stamp.exe onto the floppy.

You are done.

 

Creating a DOS boot (startup) disk from Win95/98

(Note, the method described at the top of this document is preferred, but here is one more way if you are running Win95/98.)

  1. Click the "MS-DOS prompt" option through whichever version of Windows
    you are using. Insert a floppy disc in its drive. (We shall call this
    drive A drive from now on) Preferably use a new or formatted disk.

  2. Type in "sys a:" (without the double quotes) at the prompt which will
    look like
    C:\WINDOWS:>sys a:
    This will save all the system DOS files to the A drive and thus you now
    have a bootable DOS diskette.

  3. Copy (or download) "stamp.exe" file on the same disk mentioned in step
    2. The syntax for the copy command in DOS looks like:
    C:\WINDOWS:>copy C:\<path>\stamp.exe a:
    where <path> indicates the directory path in which stamp.exe has been
    saved earlier.

  4. After performing step 3 successfully (you can run a dir on A drive to
    check), leave the disk in the A drive and restart the computer. This
    will cause it to start up in DOS mode since the default drive sequence
    is A drive and then C drive.

  5. Run the stamp.exe application and you are all set to go. Just type
    "stamp" at the command prompt.
    A:>stamp

For a WindowsME machine, go into the control panel, go under "Add/Remove Programs" then "Startup Disk" Then when you use the startup disk, select option four ("basic system") from the system menu. This will get you to the DOS Prompt.