IBM PC - Drive Overlay Software Install (without floppy/cdrom)

Setting up a new (large) hard drive on a vintage compute without a floppy or cdrom.

Requirements

• USB interface to vintage drive (e.g. USB↔IDE, USB↔mSATA, USB↔SATA etc)
• QEMU
• Ontrack boot floppy image (to install drive overlay)
• Windows 98SE boot floppy image (i.e. for FAT32 format support)

Connect the new hard drive to Linux.

Find the device name of the USB drive (dmesg or lsblk)

Run a new emulation, with direct access to the new USB drive and the Ontrack boot floppy image. Assuming the USB adapter shows up as /dev/sde, then:

qemu-system-i386 -drive file=/dev/sde,format=raw -fda ontrack-9.57.img -boot menu=on

Install the Ontrack drive overlay. I usually go for a <2GB C: / primary partition and up to 120GB D: / secondary partition on a typical 120GB SSD.

Close the emulated system down. Replace the ontrack boot floppy with the Windows 98SE boot floppy:

qemu-system-i386 -drive file=/dev/sde,format=raw -fda win98se.img -boot menu=on

Boot the Win 98SE command line rescue disk. Format, sys and fdisk the new partitions:

A:\sys c:

No need to format, as the Ontrack disk does that anyway.