It took me four hours and a lot of troubleshooting, but I have done it. I am documenting my accomplishment here, for those who want to replicate this project.
I initially became interested in this software because George R. R. Martin said in an interview that, to this day, he writes all his books in Wordstar 4.0, a writing program from 1979. I worship GRRM, his writing has an almost religious feel in my psyche. Last year, I spent a ton of money on the authentic WS4 floppy disk set, and a really old computer. The old computer kept giving me BIOS errors, so I ordered a bunch of parts and performed surgery after surgery on the machine. I couldn't get it working. Eventually I just gave up on the dream, and for the past year I've been using Google Docs like a true plebeian. I thought all was lost, because I thought DOS didn't support USB drives. Two days ago, I had a revelation, descending upon me from the heavens -- perhaps I could figure out how to get USB drives to work with DOS, and then use the USB drives to get Wordstar on the machine! So I asked the oracle that is Reddit, and Reddit said that FreeDOS can read USB drives!
Unfortunately, I could NOT figure out how to mount .IMG files on FreeDOS. I tried burning the WS installation media onto a USB drive and booting into the USB drive, but got all these errors. DosBox allows you to use "imgmount", but alas, FreeDOS does not have this command. I was ready to give up, but I found a WS .exe file, bundled with a bunch of other files -- I put these files in a folder in my c: drive on my DOS machine, and, by a miracle, it worked! I tested it by writing a document, copying the document to a USB drive, and putting the USB drive in my main PC. It worked! I got the files to my PC! YAY!
I wrote the following text in a daylog posted around a year ago: "I feel its power, its allure. I feel it changing me, slowly turning me into GRRM. I am gaining weight, I am aging, I am growing a neckbeard. Newsboy caps and suspenders. Soon I will only be dimly aware of my own existence, I will simply be an instrument controlled by the software, like the Ring of Power. The novels will write themselves."
Create a computer that is legitimately running DOS as its operating system -- no emulation.
Get that system to support USB thumbdrives in place of floppy drives.
Manage to install Wordstar without using disk images, because burning an .img onto a USB stick does NOT trick DOS into thinking the stick is a floppy drive, much to my chagrin.
Be able to transfer Wordstar documents to other computers and modern operating systems.
Software:
Files:
Hardware:
A google drive link I put together with all the files necessary
or...
Use whatever partition manager stick you want to format the hard drive of your DOS-intended PC. There's a bajillion partition managers and disk formatters out there -- use whichever one you are most comfortable with. Personally, I use GParted. It's fairly straightforward -- up the PC, and then when you reach the BIOS startup screen (the screen that shows the brandname, like Dell or HP), press F12 or F2 or whatever key it tells you to press to reach startup options. Go to "startup options" and select the USB drive with the partition manager. Boot into the partition manager and delete all partitions, making sure all the space on the disk is unallocated. You should be able to figure it out, if you are confused there are a multitude of help articles and youtube videos on the subject.
Once you download the FreeDOS zip file, extract it and use your preferred USB disk image writer to burn the FreeDOS .IMG to a USB stick. It's fairly straightfoward -- select the USB drive you want, select the disk image, and let the tool do its magic. It doesn't take up very much space and the installation should only take a few seconds. The USB writer I use is called "Rufus". If you're on Linux, you can probably get one from whatever package manager you have -- I seem to remember Linux Mint having one bundled with the operating system, back when I used it. Once you have the image, insert it into the old PC you want to install DOS on. This is the same process you did with the partition manager. Boot it up, and then when the BIOS loading screen comes up, press f12 or f2 or whatever key it says to press for startup options. This screen will be the screen that shows your PC manufacturer's name: for me, it said DELL. It might be HP, or something else. Once you're in your BIOS setup, go to "startup options" and select your USB drive from the menu, and not the hard drive.
Once you boot into the USB stick, just follow the instructions. The tool should format and install DOS, it was fairly straightforward for me and went down without a hitch. It may have you reboot your PC -- it did for me. If it does this, you will have to enter startup options again and boot into the USB stick again -- it will not automatically boot into the stick.
Once it's done, remove the USB and boot into your hard drive. It should load into the DOS terminal prompt. Voila!
You may be tempted to just download the .IMG installation disk files and burn them to a USB drive the same way you did the FreeDOS IMG. This is what I tried. No matter what I did, I could not get it to recognize the drive. I tried inserting the drive before starting the machine, and also inserting the drive once it was already started. It didn't even detect the stick; it wasn't in the A: drive, nor the D: drive, or any other drive. You simply cannot deceive DOS into thinking a USB stick is a floppy drive.
The second thing I tried was to place the set of IMG files onto a USB stick, and then copy those files to my C: drive on the DOS machine and try to mount or run them. The problem with this is that there is no image mounter in FreeDOS -- there is one in DosBox, but DosBox is not intended to run on hardware in this manner. FreeDOS uses Fdimples to install images -- however, FDimples doesn't recognize .img files.
What worked, however, was to take the files from the WS4 bundle from that website, and copy them into a folder on my C: drive. Place the files onto a USB drive using your primary computer, and then insert the USB drive into your DOS machine before starting it up. I have found that it doesn't recognize the drive if you insert it while the machine is running -- you have to insert it before startup, because the BIOS needs to detect it.
Make sure you're in your C: drive by typing "C:". Then, type "MKDIR WS-FILES". This will be the folder you paste your files into.
Next, navigate to the D: by typing "D:". Ensure that your file system is reading the drive by typing "DIR". This will list all the files in the directory -- if the system is not picking up any files, it will either list nothing or return an error.
Finally, type "COPY D: C:\WS-FILES". This will copy all files on the drive to the folder you created on the C: drive
Navigate to the WS-FILES folder by typing "C:" and then "CD WS-FILES". Then, simply type "WS". This will run the WS.EXE file. You are now running Wordstar! You can test this program by creating a file and seeing if it shows up -- it will be in the WS-FILES directory. Now you can copy it to your D: drive (the USB stick), and putting the USB drive in your main computer. Congratulations! You did it!
If you try to open a .WS file in any text editor, it will return a bunch of gibberish. This is because WS uses a proprietary file format. However, the document can be converted to intelligible text. I have provided a link to a page that details how to create a perl conversion script. You can copy the text of the script into a .pl file yourself, which is the safest possible option, or you can just download it from them, whichever you prefer. Place the script in the folder your .WS file is in, and then open the folder in command prompt and type "perl convert.pl". It's that simple.
The modern human is spoiled. They are so used to modern comforts: spell check, fonts, formatting text, text size, paper size. You are superior to the rest of mankind; you have transcended the need for such things. Some people testify to the glory of Scrivener, or Ulysses, or Focuswriter. But you know the truth. There is an allure to Wordstar that cannot be replicated by any modern software. This allure calls to me like a siren song, enraptures me, and it now calls to you, too.
Enjoy your new machine.