I have a question regarding a used IBM model 70 a friend of mine is setting
up.  I am not sure if it is a hardware issue or a software issue, but here
goes:

The IBM is a 386 and I was helping him install some standard software.  I can
not find DOS on the hard disk.  When I type "dir", I get nothing that looks
like dos or any other operating system.  It will perform some, but not all
DOS commands.  When I view the autoexec.bat file, I do not see DOS in the
path.  I do see a path designation called "smartdrive" but I have no idea what
that is, and I do not see any other clues when I look through the directory.

Can someone explain this to me?   And if so, can you tell me what to do to
disable this phantom dos so I can put DOS in its own directory like a normal
computer?  

21 responses total.

Ummm, your questions are a little wierd. It's like saying:
"My friend couldn't find his car. So we got in his car and drove down the
road looking for his car."

The fact that the machine has booted up and you can type "dir" means
that does is installed and running at that point.

A couple of points. An "operating system", like MSDOS, is a collection of
basic primitives and drivers that allow your software to talk to the
hardware in a standard fashion. The video, keyboard, disk, floppy, serial,
printer drivers, are all part of DOS. But you don't actually "run" DOS.
The program that is running when you get the "C:>" prompt is what is called
a "Command line interpreter". It takes commands that you type in and
executes them. Some, like "dir" are built into the CLI, others, like "xcopy"
or "format". It loads from the disk.

Now, are you saying that you can't find the subdirectory that contains all
these extra programs, or are you saying that you are trying to find the
actual boot image for the OS itself?

The CLI(command line interpreter) the thing that actually does the "dir"
command is loaded from a file called command.com. It's ussually, but not
always, located in the root of the C: drive.

Also, there is nothing special about the name DOS. All the extra MSDOS
programs could be stored in a subdirectory called D:\frabble\crap
It doesn't matter what the *name* of the directory is, as long as it's
on your path.

I'm also unsure what you mean by "phantom dos"? And how are you going
to "put DOS in it's own directory"?

The machine obviously has a disk operating system because it works.  I can
find no sign of what would resemble DOS on any file, directory, or
subdirectory.  There is no command.com file either.  When I put dos files into
a newly created directory and try to use them, they fail to work and I get
the message "wrong version of DOS" or something like that.

What do you mean by a "sign of what would resemble DOS?"  If DOS is working,
you obviously have something there.  Your command interpreter doesn't actually
have to be called command.com -- you could have a line in your config.sys file
saying "shell=" something else, or giving you a path to command.com if it
isn't in c:\.  What happens if you type "xcopy"?  If that works, it means you
have all those DOS files (or at least one of them) in a directory somewhere
in your path.  You could also, if it is a new enough version of DOS, try "dir
/s xcopy" to look for it.  It would presumably be with the other DOS commands.
Your "wrong version of DOS error means that the new DOS utilities you were
trying to run were from a version of DOS different from the version the
computer has installed.  You can type "ver" to see what version of DOS it is
running.  There is a "setver" command that can be used to make programs run
with the wrong DOS version, but it is probably easier to just get everything
there from one version.

Thanks scg - you were helpful and I will give it a shot.  I know some of the
files are there because I can copy files, for instance.  I can not perform
other commands such as diskcopy and a few others.  
The "dir /s xcopy" is new to me and I will try that.   I will also look at
the config.sys file. 

Thanks again Steve for taking the request seriously, even though I may not
have been too clear in describing the problem.

the "copy" command works because "copy" is built into the CLI.
I too am curious what you mean by :
"can find no sign of what would resemble DOS on any file"
What exactly are you looking for?

I second Greg's question.

Actually, when I told you to do a "dir /s xcopy" that won't actually find
anything, I just realized.  What you need is "dir /s xcopy.exe".  That should
be done from the root directory.  What this will do is do a dir of the root
directory and all its subdirectories, looking for a file called xcopy.exe,
which is one of external commands that comes with DOS.  If you find that
somewhere, I would guess that the rest of the DOS external commands are also
in the same place.  You may end up without finding anything, and that wouldn't
be too surprizing.  I've occasionally set up computers, when disk space was
tight and there was one specific thing I needed them to do, such that they
only had the bare essentials -- the hidden system files, which you aren't
likely to find just by looking around, and the command interpreter.  That
could be the case with this one.  It is more likely, though, that all that
stuff will be in another directory somewhere.

Your next question is what to do when you find that stuff.  I'm guessing that
the stuff that wouldn't run because it was the wrong version was probably from
DOS 6.something, since that's what most people are running these days.  If
that said it's an incorrect DOS version, the ver command will probbaly tell
you that it's an old DOS version (the pre Windows95 version of DOS was 6.22,
and that's probably what it makes sense to run on this thing).  You might want
to install DOS 6.22 even if you do find all the files form an older version
there.  I think if you boot from disk one of the DOS 6.22 instalation, it will
take you right into the setup program.

Ok.  What I am used to seeing is a command.com file and an autoexec.bat file
on the root directory.  Also, I am used to seeing a DOS directory with all
the files present which come with DOS.  The "Path=" line then would include
"/DOS".  

If this machine is all set up and running, can I install a later version of
DOS without screwing up the previously installed programs?

Again, thanks.

Probably.

What you are used to seeing is not the only way things can be set up.  A DOS
machine does not need an autoexec.bat; the autoexec.bat is just needed if you
have things you want the computer to do on startup.  Also, the "DOS" directory
can have any name, as long as you have it in your path.  I believe that the
DOS setup programs try to default to DOS, but if the person doing the
installation likes something else better, then it is perfectly easy for them
to change it to something else.  I'm fairly sure this wouldn't be applicable
in the case of a used 386, but to throw a further monkey wrench in any
standardization of where to put the non system file parts of DOS, the DOS-like
part of Windows95 defaults not to c:\DOS, but to c:\windows\command, but again
I think the files could be put anywhere.  Likewise, if the "shell=" line in
config.sys points at something else, there would be no need for
c:\command.com, but you would need some command interpreter somewhere.

None of those files are the actual operating system, which lives in some
hidden files on the hard drive's boot sector.

Ok, I will take another look and see what I can do.  Thanks a lot.      

It could be a *really old* version of Dos.  Like 2.0, or even 1.1.  Try
"version" at the cli prompt.  It's a built-in command.  Or pay attention
when it boots, and notice what it claims to be loading.

Ok - will do - thanks.

Actually, that's the "ver" command, to get the version.  It should
definitely shed some light.  A sign that there is no autoexec.bat 
file is that when the machine boots, it asks you for the date.
It's also possible that the autoexec.bat and/or config.sys files
were marked as "hidden," to keep unaware people from messing with
them; even the dos directory could be hidden.  Tech support depts
within a company might do this as a pro-active defense against
service calls.  Type "attrib" in the root directory to see the 
file attributes for various files; an "H" next to it means hidden.

Ok, we will try that too, thanks again.

Oh, I remembered after I logged off that attrib.exe is an external command,
so you might not have that on your system.  Also, the "dir /s" option that
scg suggested will only work in DOS 5.0 onward, when the "/s" option was
added.  So you might be up for further challenges.  If you can't run attrib,
let me know, and I'll upload a PD attribute viewer/changer.

Ok, I think I will install a newer version and hope for the best.

BTW, in general MS-DOS programs ("external commands", the programs provided
by MS or IBM as part of DOS) must be the same version as the loaded
version of DOS.  Either older or newer will produce the same "incorrect
DOS version" error.  (I'm not absolutely sure that this applies to minor
rev changes, e.g. from 3.2 to 3.3, but I'm quite sure that it's true for
major rev differences.)

But it does sound as though the system has the BIOS and COMMAND.COM but
not the rest of the DOS installation.  If that's true, you probably can
indeed upgrade to an up-to-date DOS & install the whole thing.

all the external operating system files on *this* particular 
machine were/are loaded ind the   \bin  directory, fwiw, ...and
a directory of \frabble\crap would have worked just as well whether
on a C: or D: drive ...

\bin, eh?  Sounds suspiciously like a militant Unix puke set it up. ;)

i could agree with that ....<g>. 

The original question also mentioned the existence of something like
SMARTDRV.SYS?  If this is a disk compression facility, then I would expect
a second partition that is un-compressed, since the initial boot process would
not know how to uncompress the kernel image.  It would be likely that there
would be a small boot partition containing DOS and its utilities, and then
a larger compressed partition for all the applications and data. Would the
driver also swap the drive letter designators, so that the boot partition ends
up as D:?  Look in your PATH, is there an entry that is not C:?

smartdrv.sys is a buffer in RAM so that recently used things will be
accessible at RAM speeds instead of HD speeds.  

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