Eric Auer
Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:33:43 -0700
Hi! > After "installing" FreeDOS on a FAT-32 partition, I attempted to boot > it in a couple of ways, each of which resulted in the message: > > Error loading OS
Maybe your FAT partition is not marked active or you did not SYS it? > mbrfix (an open source program for NT/XP/etc.) reported cylinders > 19457, tracks 25, cyl 64; first partition 38279 Mb type 7 (NTFS), > second 894 Mb type 12 (FAT32-LBA). Sounds okay... > sys C: > > which reported sectors/trk: 63, heads: 255 hidden: 78397200 FAT > starts at 4AC3F10 + 26 (78397200 + 38) Boot sector load seg ... 60h The hidden means that the partition starts after 78397200 sectors (of 512 bytes each) of something else. A better name would probably be partition offset but the field in the data structure apparently is even older than the idea of having multiple partitions, so originally it was used to reserve hidden space before the start of a FAT disk... SYS may have accidentally made a CHS boot sector while you needed LBA. You could try using another / newer version of our SYS. Other people on this list will probably suggest some :-). In Linux, you can also use sys-freedos-linux, in particular the "sys-freedos.pl" perl script. You need to install nasm first to run this :-). The script basically calls NASM to compile a DOS boot sector and then updates some values in the boot sector to match your partition. Make sure that you run it only on a FAT partition, not on other partitions and not on whole disks! > Does anyone have insight into this? Is it the 1024 cylinder problem? Only if SYS happened to select a CHS boot sector for you. You need a LBA boot sector here... > it. (Is Perl installed with FreeDOS? Yes but the script is for Linux ;-) > Or would I use Cygwin Perl under XP? There are other tools for XP I guess... Eric PS: Please mail me off-list if you need help for using sys-freedos.pl ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user