There is indeed no hard drive. MS-DOS 5 was the first version to have a formal installation procedure, similar to Windows. You bought it in the form of installation disks; either five 360k disks or three 1.4 MB disks. While it was primarily designed to be installed on a hard drive, it does support being installed to floppies. (MS-DOS 6 was the first to require a hard drive.) The installation spans seven 360k disks or four 1.44 MB disks.

Advertisements and reviews claimed that this machine was 100% (or nearly 100%) IBM compatible, but I suppose MS-DOS 5 is new enough that it might check for some piece of hardware that this computer either doesn't have or implements weirdly. A bare boot disk of MS-DOS 5 works fine, though.

I'm making headway with the Sharp PC-7000. I continued to have problems with install disks corrupting and refusing to format, etc. when I wrote them in my Pentium II system running Windows 98, which I have a 5.25" drive installed in, but I found out why. Apparently, despite the machine supporting 5.25" floppy drives in the BIOS, it does not control them correctly. The heads weren't being positioned at the right tracks, but the computer just played along. Often it would move the heads to the physical end of their travel, and continue to try to move them, creating a god-awful grinding noise. I moved the drive into a Socket 7 machine running Windows 98, and got the same result. Then I moved the drive into a 486 machine running Windows 95, and since then everything's been working just fine.

I successfully wrote the MS-DOS 5 install disks. The Sharp still freezes solid upon advancing past the intro screen in the install program, so I did the installation using the 486 machine instead. The Sharp boots and works just fine with the OS disks. The only bug I've found is that when I run Edit or QBasic, it loads them and then just sits there at the prompt, and then if I press CTRL-ESC, they come up and work just fine. Beats me.

My next adventure is seeing if I can get Windows 2.03 (the last version to support installation to floppies) installed. I have the install disks ready... All nine of them!

I've never messed with any of the 1x and 2x versions of Windows.

Icefoglights, I like your new "signature"! How fitting for a post about computers!

I translated it from binary and it said Robert. Nice.

I've never messed with any of the 1x and 2x versions of Windows.

They're pretty rough around the edges compared to Windows 3.0. 2.0 was actually pretty useful though - it introduced a lot of the functionality that was carried over to subsequent versions, like the Control Panel, and a lot of third party software developers got on board starting with 2.0.

Speaking of which, I successfully got Windows 2.03 installed and running with the Sharp. It works fine, but there is one hangup - it customizes the installation depending on what medium you install to, and it turns out that when you install to 5.25" disks, it installs to only two disks, and there's literally only the MS-DOS Executive - it gives you none of the included accessories, making it pretty useless. But it's a start. I'm going to see if I can install it to a hard drive on my 486 machine and then pick-and-choose files to make custom floppies.

Speaking of which, I successfully got Windows 2.03 installed and running with the Sharp. It works fine, but there is one hangup - it customizes the installation depending on what medium you install to, and it turns out that when you install to 5.25" disks, it installs to only two disks, and there's literally only the MS-DOS Executive - it gives you none of the included accessories, making it pretty useless. But it's a start. I'm going to see if I can install it to a hard drive on my 486 machine and then pick-and-choose files to make custom floppies.

Almost just as well off using DOSSHELL

Almost just as well off using DOSSHELL

Probably more so lol. Shell would be a lot more functional.

It turns out that any of the floppy installations only give you the MS-DOS Executive, although installation to two 720k disks or one high density disk does give you more fonts, the print spooler, and a file called winoldap.mod, which some extra software requires. Only when you install to a hard drive do you get everything else. And a full installation is only 1.3 MB in size, so I don't get why they couldn't give you almost everything on the two larger floppy install options. Especially since in 1987 only a little over half of PCs had hard drives. I suppose the barebone installation still allows you to run extra software, but it's still kind of odd.

To exemplify this, I've managed to move almost everything to two more 360k disks. All that's missing are a couple of fonts and winoldap.mod (because both of those have to be on the system disk, which lacks space). All the applications work just fine, so I don't know why Microsoft couldn't provide an option to install to four 360k disks.

In other news, it turns out that even the very first version of Microsoft Word for Windows requires Windows 2.11, so I guess I'll be playing with the DOS version of Word on this thing. Also, the B: drive is once again pretending every disk is single-sided, so I guess I gotta pull it apart and clean the heads again. And I literally just had it apart yesterday to clean the heads after testing a rotten disk bunged up both drives, and the drive in the 486. Maybe I should invest in a cleaning disk?

It has been a long time since that I created dual diskette of Microsoft Windows 2.xx for the original IBM PC

Did you work with this machine without the mouse? (Uses the keyboard interface to move around between active windows )

Yep, no mouse. The machine has a 25-pin serial port, so I would need a 25-pin to 9-pin adapter to use a mouse. I'm quite sure I have one, but who knows where. Early versions of Windows are quite intuitive to navigate without a mouse.

Try <Alt><F4> keyboard function at the desktop.  The shutdown dialog box still there since the inception of Microsoft Windows

So hack an adapter ?

<Alt><F4>...  Had used it from time to time in the past, but gained a new appreciation for it when forced to use Windows 8.

Oh yeah, I use Alt-F4 a lot, both in using early versions of Windows without a mouse and even on modern computers. 

So hack an adapter ?

For the mouse you mean? Like I said, I think I have an adapter somewhere. Or if I don't, I can get one on eBay for $5. It wouldn't be economical to build my own because the parts would cost more than a pre-assembled one.

I didnt say build, i said hack.. Just for a test

Parallel port bracket (flat cable with DB25 connector) - Take the connector from that and plug into DB25 serial port. 9 pin EIA232 bracket - Use that for the mouse. Interconnect the matching holes of the 2 flat cables with short wires

Alternatively you can use standard 2.54mm single pin connectors (like used on front panel LEDs and switches) to connect direclty to the 4 needed pins in the 25 pin EIA232

(And i guess the 25 pin EIA232 is on board, otherwise you could just connect a 9 pin bracket to it ?