Op 3-8-2011 23:05, Georg Potthast schreef:
> I did a test of this CD too. First I would suggest to make an El-Torito hard
> disk instead of using ISOLinux. DOS I feel should boot directly and not by
> booting a version of Linux first. I did my LifeCDs with FreeDOS just as an
> El-Torito hard disk with 10MB.
Hi Georg, thanks for your feedback, much appreciated.
You mean ELTORITO harddisk emulation instead of floppy emulation or
non-emulation mode? That could work, though your use case (your own
written shareware USB drivers) assumes a much more modern machine than
many situations FreeDOS could be used for.
Is there any driver for read-mounting harddisk images (maybe SHSUFDRV)
in a situation where you boot from a separate bootdisk, access the CD
and mount this (single-partition) harddisk image?
> Then I have to mention that I cannot read the menu within 5 seconds and
> decide what to select. After 5 seconds the menu will run automatically into
> the install FreeDOS on hard disk branch. And then wait forever to select the
> language. Therefore I would suggest to have no menu selection to be run
> automatically. Today, most people may use the CD to boot FreeDOS on a
> Windows7 PC and they do not want to install FreeDOS on the NTFS disk.
The idea is people select what to do in the Isolinux menu, thus skipping
any CONFIG.SYS menu. However there should be a short timeout to select
alternative options in case JEMM and the computer don't like eachother
very much.
>
> When I select "Use FreeDOS as LiveCD system.." and have a Flash disk
> inserted, the El-Torito Bootable CD-Rom driver results in the error:
> "JemmEX: exception 0D occured".
That's new to me, I might be able to test this sometime. Also I should
upload the ISO-inside-ISO so inner ISO is loaded to system memory then
mounted by ELTORITO.SYS.
> When I have no Flash disk inserted it boots ok and the prompt is on drive F:
> However, when I enter "keyb gr" I get the error: "JemmEX: exception 06
> occured".
Yes KEYB or its keyboard layout files are a bit buggy, I've received
suggestions to use some older layout files, not tested that out.
>
> Further drive F: is called "FD11Setup". Drive A: is "FDOS11Setup". Now, when
> I load DOSUSB and then "devload usbdisk.sys" the block device driver
> usbdisk.sys will get the drive letter F: from FreeDOS. Apparently it does
> not supply the next drive letter which would be G:. I can then access the
> flash disk as F:, but "FD11Setup" is gone.
Yes I've experienced this issue as well. A workaround is loading
SHSUFDRV (SHSUFDRV /F:F:\ISOLINUX\FDBOOT.IMG) then load your drivers.
Another workaround is unloading SHSUCDX temporary (which is rather messy
if doing so from the CD's driveletter..). A proper solution is getting
DEVLOAD fixed.
As for your drivers, I'm rather curious. Suppose I boot an USB flash
disk (2.0 interface, 2.0 port), and crappy BIOS is happy to stick to 1.1
speed. The flash disk gets assigned C:.
Next, I'd load your drivers, which
1) disable all BIOS legacy USB emulation (bye keyboard, mouse..)
2) Make contents of C: disappear below my feet and scripts can't continue.
How's this situation solved?
>
> The next menu option ("Boot into LiveCD system") will display the message
> "SHSUCDX could not detect any drives". When I enter "keyb gr" it returns
> "bad command or file name"
If no CD found then no KEYB found either as it's not in the floppy part
but just on data part of CD.
> The next menu option ("Load liveCD system without drivers") will boot ok
> with the same flash disk inserted and the command prompt will show G:
> If I then enter "keyb gr" to get German keyboard support the keyboard driver
> will crash with "illegal opcode".
Same KEYB issue, but it's intriguing that in this case everything loads
properly, while JEMM refuses (you could try JEMMEX LOAD from commandline
and see if errors encountered)
> When I enter "menu" as instructed, FreeDOS returns "bad command or file
> name" - so it does not find the menu command.
Hm MENU should be an ALIAS to the \SETUP.BAT , type ALIAS. I'll check if
this still works as intended.
> By the way this option selects option 5 on the next menu which does not show
> that as a valid (or documented) option.
Maybe ISOLINUX.CFG has a {FD=5?SOMETHING} string, or FDCONFIG.SYS. I'm
not sure anymore.
Anyway, I like the ISOLINUX menu solution as it allows to select/run
FDISK pretty fast without going through the mess of CD drivers.
Another big benefit is freeing the CD drive, as well as having writeable
space on A:.
Your harddisk image suggestion is an interesting option, I'll look into
it through both direct emulation and through isolinux/memdisk emulation.
ofcourse it will show up as C:, pushing real harddisk back to D:.
http://bootcd.narod.ru/images_e.htm also shows some interesting floppy
images (thus not ruining harddisk driveletter).
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