Re: [Freedos-user] Re : Support for 4k byte sectors
... No cache will ever compete with a RAM disk. RAM is always faster than disks with their seek/rotational latencies and their much slower transfer rates. I knew this would provoke a comment from you, Jack. The purpose of a cache is to put as much data in RAM as it can, so that the disk is accessed as little as possible. It's true that the cached data does eventually get written to disk, and that part is slow. From a speed perspective, though, a well-designed cache can be competitive with a RAM disk. The advantage of a write-delay cache is that that the writing can be done when the system is idle (a simple form of multi-tasking). The end result is that even though disk writes actually take the same amount of time they always did, the SYSTEM actually runs much faster. In my experience and opinion (and it is only an opinion), write-through caches don't provide enough speed benefit to be very helpful, and I don't use them. ... There is a REASON why Write Back caches are all so large -- they demand MANY hooks of a non-generic type into a DOS system, to handle Ctrl/Alt/DEL and other events that require a flush of sectors not-yet written to disk. Yes, write-delay caches are MUCH more complicated than write-through caches. But, they also provide MUCH more practical benefit, IMO. Even with that being said, I don't use SMARTDRV all the time. I only use it in certain situations when it provides noticeable benefit, and in those particular situations a write-through cache doesn't help. Also, FWIW, you can disable write-delay caching in SMARTDRV if you want, in which case it works sort of like UIDE or LBACACHE (except that it will also _natively_ work with non-INT 13h disks like USB and SCSI), but at the expense of requiring more memory. -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Re : Support for 4k byte sectors
I knew this would provoke a comment from you, Jack. Yes, you always were a provoker, weren't you, Bret? The purpose of a cache is to put as much data in RAM as it can, so that the disk is accessed as little as possible. It's true that the cached data does eventually get written to disk, and that part is slow. From a speed perspective, though, a well-designed cache can be competitive with a RAM disk. Exactly why I designed UIDE to have all the features I noted before, along with using only 944 bytes of memory (and some HMA which nothing but MS-DOS HIMEM ever used before) and using XMS for its cache tables and cache data. Try to find any Write Back caches that do so much, for so little memory! The advantage of a write-delay cache is that that the writing can be done when the system is idle (a simple form of multi-tasking). The end result is that even though disk writes actually take the same amount of time they always did, the SYSTEM actually runs much faster. In my experience and opinion (and it is only an opinion), write-through caches don't provide enough speed benefit to be very helpful, and I don't use them. Well, we remain on different sides of a fence! I say Write Through caches provide a LOT of benefit, especially UIDE which can cache up to 4-GB of data! Assuming only 2.5 or 3-GB is assigned to UIDE, one can have 500-MB+ for a nice RAM disk like my RDISK offers, and so one gets The best of both worlds: A (big!) RAM disk for fast files, plus a (big!) cache for ordinary disk files. UIDE/RDISK handle GIGABYTES, not KB or MB like too many other never-upgraded RAM disk and Write- Back cache programs! You can KEEP all those old guys, and I shall continue to do the BEST possible in UIDE/RDISK, for a LOT less memory! There is a REASON why Write Back caches are all so large -- they demand MANY hooks of a non-generic type into a DOS system ... Yes, write-delay caches are MUCH more complicated than write-through caches. But, they also provide MUCH more practical benefit, IMO ... How I just DETEST Internet abbreviations, which are always such LAZY and/or BAD English! But FYB, IMO it is rather IMPRACTICAL to use so much system memory in SMARTDRV/NCACHE2/etc. DOS is in fact memory limited, and if I can have 90% the benefit of most Write Back caches for 90% LESS memory by using UIDE, THAT seems a little more PRACTICAL! Even with that being said, I don't use SMARTDRV all the time. I only use it in certain situations when it provides noticeable benefit, and in those particular situations a write-through cache doesn't help. Why not just use UIDE all the time? You would get UltraDMA I-O rather than whatever your BIOS currently does, and I bet your NET system speed would be greater, from having SOME type of cache active at all times! Also, FWIW, you can disable write-delay caching in SMARTDRV if you want, in which case it works sort of like UIDE or LBACACHE (except that it will also _natively_ work with non-INT 13h disks like USB and SCSI), but at the expense of requiring more memory. SCSI disks are rarely seen on PCs, due to their high disk and controller cost. USB disks are also rarely seen, since they are not-yet reliable, nor in many cases are they fast-enough to replace hard disks. SATA/IDE own the hard-disk market and probably will for a LONG time. So, I am not-at-all bothered by UIDE handling only Int 13h disks, especially as it still CAN be called by other drivers to cache THEIR disks, as well! -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] questions on installation and acpi
Op 17-1-2012 4:31, TJ Edmister schreef: Greetings, I wanted to try out FreeDOS on an old laptop where I have replaced the HDD with a CF card. I am looking to avoid floppies/CDs however, so I am wondering if anyone has an image that could be written to the CF card that would then boot into FreeDOS. I`ve found that once I have a bootable CF card I can dump the whole thing to an image using a sector editor, and use that image to make another CF card of equal or greater size bootable as well. Having a bootable image available would be convenient for some folks, am I right? The DOSUSB website offers a LiveCD that uses harddisk emulation. You should be able to extract it using 7Zip for example. Afterwards run WinImage on the harddisk image, select partition, and then save the partition and have WinImage add a partition table and MBR again. I`m also wondering if it is possible to install FreeDOS onto a FAT16/32 partition alongside Windows NT4/2K/XP and add it to the Windows boot menu by pointing it to a file containing the FreeDOS boot sector. That is how I keep a win98 command prompt around as an option on 2K/XP boxes. The tricky part of course is getting that boot sector, along with the numbers in it that match the drive geometry. I`m assuming FreeDOS uses its own boot sector that is different than a DOS or win9x one, is this correct? Does it use IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS as system files or are they called something else? It's possible, but I'm not 100% sure FreeDOS won't ruin the NT bootloader. Think I disabled all SYS code except for offering the user a choice at end of installation. Getting a bootsector created by SYS is quite simple: SYS C: C: C:\FREEDOS.BIN /BOOTONLY If used as this it won't even write to the real bootsector area, but instead to this file C:\FREEDOS.BIN Bootsector indeed is different, and only kernel file is \KERNEL.SYS (though you can rename it, and specify which name to load in the bootsector, it's the /K option in FreeDOS SYS program). The tricky part is getting to run SYS if you can only operate in Windows. Usually a bootable CD or so is needed first. I don't know if SYSLINUX, GRUB and a recent DOS USB flash installer called RUFUS [ http://pbatard.github.com/rufus/ ] can interact with the drive where Windows is running on, from Windows itself. The other thing I`m curious about is how speedstep and CPU states are working under FreeDOS. I have another laptop which had the CPU (a low-voltage one that is soldered to the board!) replaced with a faster model. Since the BIOS wasn`t designed to support this, it always boots up at the default (minimum) speed. There are utilities to manipulate the CPU speed under Windows but I haven`t found anything that runs under DOS. I tried FDAPM, and got an error about unable to parse ... but surprisingly, using the speed argument I was able to switch it to something even slower (but not faster). I didn`t know a Pentium M could run at less than 600MHz, but when I used speed4 it seemed like it was cut down to half that speed. (I took this opportunity to run the old bytemark CPU benchmark, which normally would crash on anything 600MHz or faster due to a bug) FDAPM, PCISLEEP or some ancient DOS slowdown utilities. DOS in general doesn't do much with ACPI. ATX-shutdown-support is present though. -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Bootable FreeDOS CD or USB Drive for Flashing Motherboard BIOS
Op 17-1-2012 7:15, Rugxulo schreef: You can convert an existing bootable DOS floppy image into a .iso for burning to CD with the following (DOS) freeware tool: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/downloads/mkbiso.zip Does this work for any size floppy image or only 1.44MB? In principle BIOS flashing can be done from a freely distributable floppy disk/image, containing KERNEL.SYS, COMMAND.COM and FLASHROM.EXE (though the flash program by BIOS maker or motherboard manufacturer might be more reliable). -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Re : Support for 4k byte sectors
In reply to : Eric Auer e.auer@*.de Hi Bertho, trying to reiterate / re-explain my plan / idea: Fine ! a DRIVER could interface with any disk with any sector size and then just provide an int13 or int25/26 interface with 512 byte sector size for data transfer to DOS. As explained in a longer mail this week, it actually SHOULD work: Only a few values in the boot sector would differ from a native 4k sector FAT filesystem compared to a filesystem where things work in groups of 8 sectors of 512 byte each, which is exactly what you would get when you make a 4k disk I'm not opposed to this method, which I see as a workaround rather than a fully satisfying answer however. You insist on FAT32 compatibility , but what about FAT16 even FAT12 ?(Yes I like having a primary FAT12 partition, 32 MBytes or so, at the start of hard disks. But this is I ...) Alignment of the data (and FAT) sectors is more difficult to achieve for DOS partitions of these types than FAT32. Another potential drawback of the translating driver approach is write thrashing on sector writes unless disk driver does some delayed-write of its own, independent of any higher level cache... further complicating the matter. Finally I need hardly craw attention on a weird effect in the case of the very device which caused me to start this whole subject : the physical Hitachi disk has 512 K sectors, the SATAUSB bridge already does its own 512/4096 conversion (including internal buffering and, I'm not sure but possibly, delaying write back)... your proposed driver would in effect dutifully cancel the packing/unpacking done by the appliance's firmware ! This means you cannot make the RAW DISK visible to DOS that way, but you ONLY have to show DOS a modified boot sector to make the rest of an otherwise unchanged PARTITION work from native 4k sectors into show DOS 512 byte fake sec size. (snipped...) Kind of crippling a device if you ask me. I'm not saying it wouldn't be usable, and certainly better than no access at all - still ISTM the real answer is for the DOS kernel to be able to support native 4k sectors (that limit is also artificial but it seems the right figure at the moment, possibly forever as far as DOS extended lifetime goes; and 4k buffers aren't /that/ expensive, even without a special sparing allocation scheme, provided the number of buffers in fdconfig be kept within reason). Regards -- Czerno -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Big bootable disk for CD
I have done this some time ago, it may help. It is for CD, but it would be nice to convert it to SD-card... Alain Em 15-06-2011 11:51, Alain Mouette escreveu: How can I make a big (6Mb) bootable image to use in the CD? This is the only part of the CD that I can read on *any* machine, I am using isolinux) With lots of help fom Eric Auer, I managed to make a bootable image with FreeDOS. Here is how I did it: 1) Program needed: NASM, which I got from Debian $ sudo apt-get install nasm 2) program from Eric for the boot sector: http://ericauer.cosmodata.virtuaserver.com.br/soft/specials/sys-freedos-linux.zip create a directory ./sys-freedos-linux and expand it there 3) create file of the right size. 5760k was ok for me, there is some magic in the size and not everything will be ok. (more studies needed) $ dd if=/dev/zero of=FreeDOS.img count=11520 11520+0 records in 11520+0 records out 5898240 bytes (5.9 MB) copied, 0.408512 s, 14.4 MB/s 4) Prepare it with a FAT file system $ sudo mkdosfs -v FreeDOS.img mkdosfs 3.0.1 (23 Nov 2008) FreeDOS.img has 64 heads and 32 sectors per track, logical sector size is 512, using 0xf8 media descriptor, with 11520 sectors; file system has 2 12-bit FATs and 4 sectors per cluster. FAT size is 9 sectors, and provides 2867 clusters. Root directory contains 512 slots. Volume ID is 0cbb7ca7, no volume label. 5) compile and write a suitable boot sector. This is a smart script by Eric Auer that configures it with the appropiate parameters $ ./sys-freedos-linux/sys-freedos.pl --disk=FreeDOS.img DOS boot sector for FreeDOS.img will be created by: nasm -o /dev/stdout -dISFAT12 ./sys-freedos-linux/bootsecs/boot.asm Using FAT12. Partn offset 0, CHS *x64x32 Drive 0, (0x0, 0x29), SerNo CBB-7CA7, Strings ' ', 'FAT12 '. Boot sector successfully updated. 6) mount it in a directory $ mkdir bootimg $ sudo mount -v -o loop,uid=you,gid=you FreeDOS.img bootimg 7) copy into it KERNEL.SYS, COMMAND.COM and all other files 8) use it just the same way then the image made from a floppy, memdisk will recognize it. I used isolinux, here is how I created the iso: $ mkisofs -R -v -A FreeDOS big boot CD -V FreeDOS-V1.x \ -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat \ -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \ -o /mnt/dados/Segurver/FreeDOS-V1.x.iso \ /mnt/dados/CDROM Alain -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Re : Support for 4k byte sectors
Op 17-1-2012 18:48, Jack schreef: Also, FWIW, you can disable write-delay caching in SMARTDRV if you want, in which case it works sort of like UIDE or LBACACHE (except that it will also _natively_ work with non-INT 13h disks like USB and SCSI), but at the expense of requiring more memory. SCSI disks are rarely seen on PCs, due to their high disk and controller cost. USB disks are also rarely seen, since they are not-yet reliable, nor in many cases are they fast-enough to replace hard disks. SATA/IDE own the hard-disk market and probably will for a LONG time. So, I am not-at-all bothered by UIDE handling only Int 13h disks, especially as it still CAN be called by other drivers to cache THEIR disks, as well! I wonder if the caching can be implemented in the El-Torito DOS driver. This driver is used for anything looking like a bootable CD, be it a physical bootable CD on IDE/SATA/SCSI/USB-connected controller, or a MEMDISK-loaded (thus in13 supporting) ISO file. I'll do some benchmarking anyway. Copying from a virtual CD located in system memory, to a SHSURDRV-generated ramdisk. I'll try UIDE, CDRCACHE and LBACACHE. Eric suspected all of them won't have that much use. -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Re : Support for 4k byte sectors
Op 17-1-2012 18:48, Jack schreef: SCSI disks are rarely seen on PCs, due to their high disk and controller cost. USB disks are also rarely seen, since they are not-yet reliable, nor in many cases are they fast-enough to replace hard disks. SATA/IDE own the hard-disk market and probably will for a LONG time. So, I am not-at-all bothered by UIDE handling only Int 13h disks, especially as it still CAN be called by other drivers to cache THEIR disks, as well! Helps if I actually paste the link to the code for that eltorito driver [ http://git.kernel.org/?p=boot/syslinux/syslinux.git;a=blob;f=dosutil/eltorito.asm;h=d6b6b50e228474df6e21af2297b7cad637359d0f;hb=refs/heads/master ]. My apologies for the extra mail. Bernd -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Big bootable disk for CD
Op 17-1-2012 20:27, Alain Mouette schreef: I have done this some time ago, it may help. It is for CD, but it would be nice to convert it to SD-card... Alain, thanks for your explicit instructions, they're very clear..if running Linux :) Some pre-made images seem available already from: [ http://bootcd.narod.ru/images_e.htm ]. -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Bootable FreeDOS CD or USB Drive for Flashing Motherboard BIOS
Thanks everyone for all the responses. I guess there is not a how-to for creating a bootable FreeDOS CD? That is, it takes fiddling and experimentation and a successful method has not been posted to the FreeDOS wiki? The point of greatest interest is what files are needed on the CD, exactly (including all their dependencies...so if command.com has dependencies, I'd need to include those.) Also how exactly to make the CD bootable in a FreeDOS acceptable way. I really would like to be able to create such a CD and get the BIOS up to date. I deeply appreciate advice on how to really do it. I will fiddle with Alain's suggestion, I did something close to that a few months ago in a very similar effort but evidently missed some important step. Bob On 1/17/12 1:49 PM, Bernd Blaauw wrote: Op 17-1-2012 7:15, Rugxulo schreef: You can convert an existing bootable DOS floppy image into a .iso for burning to CD with the following (DOS) freeware tool: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/downloads/mkbiso.zip Does this work for any size floppy image or only 1.44MB? In principle BIOS flashing can be done from a freely distributable floppy disk/image, containing KERNEL.SYS, COMMAND.COM and FLASHROM.EXE (though the flash program by BIOS maker or motherboard manufacturer might be more reliable). -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Big bootable disk for CD
Alain, I would like to try your method. I did something like this a few months ago but evidently missed a step since my CD would not really boot. This was to enable flashing a BIOS update on a motherboard. Can you tell me the names of all the files needed in your step 7? Perhaps I missed a file. Thanks so much! Bob Cochran On 1/17/12 2:27 PM, Alain Mouette wrote: I have done this some time ago, it may help. It is for CD, but it would be nice to convert it to SD-card... Alain Em 15-06-2011 11:51, Alain Mouette escreveu: How can I make a big (6Mb) bootable image to use in the CD? This is the only part of the CD that I can read on *any* machine, I am using isolinux) With lots of help fom Eric Auer, I managed to make a bootable image with FreeDOS. Here is how I did it: 1) Program needed: NASM, which I got from Debian $ sudo apt-get install nasm 2) program from Eric for the boot sector: http://ericauer.cosmodata.virtuaserver.com.br/soft/specials/sys-freedos-linux.zip create a directory ./sys-freedos-linux and expand it there 3) create file of the right size. 5760k was ok for me, there is some magic in the size and not everything will be ok. (more studies needed) $ dd if=/dev/zero of=FreeDOS.img count=11520 11520+0 records in 11520+0 records out 5898240 bytes (5.9 MB) copied, 0.408512 s, 14.4 MB/s 4) Prepare it with a FAT file system $ sudo mkdosfs -v FreeDOS.img mkdosfs 3.0.1 (23 Nov 2008) FreeDOS.img has 64 heads and 32 sectors per track, logical sector size is 512, using 0xf8 media descriptor, with 11520 sectors; file system has 2 12-bit FATs and 4 sectors per cluster. FAT size is 9 sectors, and provides 2867 clusters. Root directory contains 512 slots. Volume ID is 0cbb7ca7, no volume label. 5) compile and write a suitable boot sector. This is a smart script by Eric Auer that configures it with the appropiate parameters $ ./sys-freedos-linux/sys-freedos.pl --disk=FreeDOS.img DOS boot sector for FreeDOS.img will be created by: nasm -o /dev/stdout -dISFAT12 ./sys-freedos-linux/bootsecs/boot.asm Using FAT12. Partn offset 0, CHS *x64x32 Drive 0, (0x0, 0x29), SerNo CBB-7CA7, Strings ' ', 'FAT12 '. Boot sector successfully updated. 6) mount it in a directory $ mkdir bootimg $ sudo mount -v -o loop,uid=you,gid=you FreeDOS.img bootimg 7) copy into it KERNEL.SYS, COMMAND.COM and all other files 8) use it just the same way then the image made from a floppy, memdisk will recognize it. I used isolinux, here is how I created the iso: $ mkisofs -R -v -A FreeDOS big boot CD -V FreeDOS-V1.x \ -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat \ -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \ -o /mnt/dados/Segurver/FreeDOS-V1.x.iso \ /mnt/dados/CDROM Alain -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Bootable FreeDOS CD or USB Drive for Flashing Motherboard BIOS
Op 18-1-2012 0:04, Bob Cochran schreef: Thanks everyone for all the responses. I guess there is not a how-to for creating a bootable FreeDOS CD? That is, it takes fiddling and experimentation and a successful method has not been posted to the FreeDOS wiki? The point of greatest interest is what files are needed on the CD, exactly (including all their dependencies...so if command.com has dependencies, I'd need to include those.) Also how exactly to make the CD bootable in a FreeDOS acceptable way. Everything depends on what you want. Direct floppy emulation is the easiest, many Windows CD-writing programs support that (Imgburn for example). 1) Download a bootable floppy image (MSDOS or FreeDOS) 2) Open in WinImage, change size to 2.88MB or leave at 1.44MB 3) Delete all contents besides kernel.sys and command.com. 4) Insert flasher program and the BIOS file (if it even fits anymore on floppy nowadays). 5) Add an autoexec.bat that executes the flash program. Only if you're absolutely sure though and want to automate. This can ruin systems if things go wrong! 6) Save the image 7) Open Imgburn, Nero or whatever, create a bootable CD and supply the floppy image file you saved in step 6. My own requirements for FreeDOS CD go a lot further with regard to bootloader, floppy contents, detecting CD contents, executing it etc. Slightly more complex, I'm afraid. I really would like to be able to create such a CD and get the BIOS up to date. See if any of the various responses are enough to help you out. A bootdisk can generally be obtained from www.bootdisk.img (but those images are executables with WinImage compression, so you need to open WinImage, then select to open an image and look for your saved floppy image file) I deeply appreciate advice on how to really do it. I will fiddle with Alain's suggestion, I did something close to that a few months ago in a very similar effort but evidently missed some important step. Goodluck doing so. I'm working on creating a remaster ability in FreeDOS which has limited use because there's most CD-recording software in DOS is Linux-based and thus depends on something called ASPI, for which only paid legal solutions exist. Bob -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Bootable FreeDOS CD or USB Drive for Flashing Motherboard BIOS
Have you seen my mesage from *today* 5:27pm (gmt-2) Alain Em 17-01-2012 21:04, Bob Cochran escreveu: Thanks everyone for all the responses. I guess there is not a how-to for creating a bootable FreeDOS CD? That is, it takes fiddling and experimentation and a successful method has not been posted to the FreeDOS wiki? The point of greatest interest is what files are needed on the CD, exactly (including all their dependencies...so if command.com has dependencies, I'd need to include those.) Also how exactly to make the CD bootable in a FreeDOS acceptable way. I really would like to be able to create such a CD and get the BIOS up to date. I deeply appreciate advice on how to really do it. I will fiddle with Alain's suggestion, I did something close to that a few months ago in a very similar effort but evidently missed some important step. Bob On 1/17/12 1:49 PM, Bernd Blaauw wrote: Op 17-1-2012 7:15, Rugxulo schreef: You can convert an existing bootable DOS floppy image into a .iso for burning to CD with the following (DOS) freeware tool: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/downloads/mkbiso.zip Does this work for any size floppy image or only 1.44MB? In principle BIOS flashing can be done from a freely distributable floppy disk/image, containing KERNEL.SYS, COMMAND.COM and FLASHROM.EXE (though the flash program by BIOS maker or motherboard manufacturer might be more reliable). -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] questions on installation and acpi
On Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:47:10 -0500, Bernd Blaauw bbla...@home.nl wrote: Op 17-1-2012 4:31, TJ Edmister schreef: I`m also wondering if it is possible to install FreeDOS onto a FAT16/32 partition alongside Windows NT4/2K/XP and add it to the Windows boot menu by pointing it to a file containing the FreeDOS boot sector. That is how I keep a win98 command prompt around as an option on 2K/XP boxes. The tricky part of course is getting that boot sector, along with the numbers in it that match the drive geometry. I`m assuming FreeDOS uses its own boot sector that is different than a DOS or win9x one, is this correct? Does it use IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS as system files or are they called something else? It's possible, but I'm not 100% sure FreeDOS won't ruin the NT bootloader. Think I disabled all SYS code except for offering the user a choice at end of installation. Getting a bootsector created by SYS is quite simple: SYS C: C: C:\FREEDOS.BIN /BOOTONLY If used as this it won't even write to the real bootsector area, but instead to this file C:\FREEDOS.BIN Thanks, I was able to get this working. Since I already had a flash card setup with NT4 and win98, I booted to the win98 prompt, ran SYS as you described, copied KERNEL.SYS to C:\ and added a C:\FREEDOS.BIN=FreeDOS line to BOOT.INI. I also created an FDCONFIG.SYS with a SHELL= line pointing to the COMMAND.COM included with FD -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Big bootable disk for CD
Ah, ok, next message :) Well, you can use mine :) 1) Grab this: http://suporte.cosmodata.com.br/downloads/moni/CosmoData-M15020.iso 2) don't touch the COSMODAT dir... (no big deal, there is a password on sensitive files) 3) the FreeDOS/Disk is a perfect image of the boot disk, the CosmoDOS.img is the booting image. This iso works, you can burn it and test :) It is a version a few months older then FreeDOS 1.1. It is full GPL, all sources are included :) Alain Em 17-01-2012 21:07, Bob Cochran escreveu: Alain, I would like to try your method. I did something like this a few months ago but evidently missed a step since my CD would not really boot. This was to enable flashing a BIOS update on a motherboard. Can you tell me the names of all the files needed in your step 7? Perhaps I missed a file. Thanks so much! Bob Cochran On 1/17/12 2:27 PM, Alain Mouette wrote: I have done this some time ago, it may help. It is for CD, but it would be nice to convert it to SD-card... Alain Em 15-06-2011 11:51, Alain Mouette escreveu: How can I make a big (6Mb) bootable image to use in the CD? This is the only part of the CD that I can read on *any* machine, I am using isolinux) With lots of help fom Eric Auer, I managed to make a bootable image with FreeDOS. Here is how I did it: 1) Program needed: NASM, which I got from Debian $ sudo apt-get install nasm 2) program from Eric for the boot sector: http://ericauer.cosmodata.virtuaserver.com.br/soft/specials/sys-freedos-linux.zip create a directory ./sys-freedos-linux and expand it there 3) create file of the right size. 5760k was ok for me, there is some magic in the size and not everything will be ok. (more studies needed) $ dd if=/dev/zero of=FreeDOS.img count=11520 11520+0 records in 11520+0 records out 5898240 bytes (5.9 MB) copied, 0.408512 s, 14.4 MB/s 4) Prepare it with a FAT file system $ sudo mkdosfs -v FreeDOS.img mkdosfs 3.0.1 (23 Nov 2008) FreeDOS.img has 64 heads and 32 sectors per track, logical sector size is 512, using 0xf8 media descriptor, with 11520 sectors; file system has 2 12-bit FATs and 4 sectors per cluster. FAT size is 9 sectors, and provides 2867 clusters. Root directory contains 512 slots. Volume ID is 0cbb7ca7, no volume label. 5) compile and write a suitable boot sector. This is a smart script by Eric Auer that configures it with the appropiate parameters $ ./sys-freedos-linux/sys-freedos.pl --disk=FreeDOS.img DOS boot sector for FreeDOS.img will be created by: nasm -o /dev/stdout -dISFAT12 ./sys-freedos-linux/bootsecs/boot.asm Using FAT12. Partn offset 0, CHS *x64x32 Drive 0, (0x0, 0x29), SerNo CBB-7CA7, Strings ' ', 'FAT12 '. Boot sector successfully updated. 6) mount it in a directory $ mkdir bootimg $ sudo mount -v -o loop,uid=you,gid=you FreeDOS.img bootimg 7) copy into it KERNEL.SYS, COMMAND.COM and all other files 8) use it just the same way then the image made from a floppy, memdisk will recognize it. I used isolinux, here is how I created the iso: $ mkisofs -R -v -A FreeDOS big boot CD -V FreeDOS-V1.x \ -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat \ -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \ -o /mnt/dados/Segurver/FreeDOS-V1.x.iso \ /mnt/dados/CDROM Alain -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
Re: [Freedos-user] Re : Support for 4k byte sectors
Hi Bertho, a DRIVER could interface with any disk with any sector size and then just provide an int13 or int25/26 interface with 512 byte sector size for data transfer to DOS. I'm not opposed to this method, which I see as a workaround rather than a fully satisfying answer however. On one hand, it is in the way of formatting and is less fast. But on the plus side, it saves RAM for the DOS kernel... :-) Also, the driver can parse GPT partition tables so it helps kernels which only understand classic MBR partition tables. Of course to have 2 TB in ONE drive letter, you need the support for big sectors and/or (?) GPT in the kernel itself. You insist on FAT32 compatibility , but what about FAT16 FAT32 is more flexible in some aspects, so it is easier to tell DOS that a FAT32 partition on a 4k-disk is a slightly odd FAT32 partition on a (virtually) 512-disk than to do the same for FAT16 or FAT12. Also, what would you do with such a tiny partition on such a large harddisk? ;-) physical Hitachi disk has 512 K sectors, the SATAUSB bridge already does its own 512/4096 conversion (including internal buffering and, I'm not sure but possibly, delaying write back)... your proposed driver would in effect dutifully cancel the packing/unpacking done by the appliance's firmware ! Yeah talk about strange design decisions... The USB box makes you believe that a 512 byte disk is 4k based and my suggested DOS driver makes DOS believe that a 4k one consists of 512 byte units. But unless you change the USB firmware, there is no way to transfer only those 512 byte sectors to your 512 byte disk in the USB box that you actually wanted to update, I guess... This means you cannot make the RAW DISK visible to DOS that way, but you ONLY have to show DOS a modified boot sector to make the rest of an otherwise unchanged PARTITION work from native 4k sectors into show DOS 512 byte fake sec size. Kind of crippling a device if you ask me. You probably lose some speed, but this is a general DOS problem already: Modern disks are below their peak speed if you access single sectors (even native 4k sectors). DOS would have to do more pooling and maybe read-ahead. the real answer is for the DOS kernel to be able to support native 4k sectors To have a real decent performance, especially (!) on a large disk, you must not use FAT. Or if you really do have to use FAT, at least cache the FAT in RAM as Win9x did. For DOS, that means XMS or similar, a few MB of it. Or of course implement a decent filesystem like ext2, as others like NTFS or ext4 will take even more RAM to run. 4k buffers aren't /that/ expensive You should have a few per drive letter and buffers should be in your HMA, of which 40k of 64k are already filled by the kernel code. So you want a few times N sectors in 24k and you suggest to make each buffer 4k instead of 0.5k... Regards, Eric -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Re : Support for 4k byte sectors
Hi Jack, Try to find any Write Back caches that do so much, for so little memory! Sure, it takes more memory. If it is not just local pooling within a few kB and with tiny timeout, it will take even more memory, for logics and extra security logics for writeback. But larger writes really help, in particular with flash / SSD. The advantage of a write-delay cache is that that the writing can be done when the system is idle (a simple form of multi-tasking). That counts as advanced cache with a lot of code and can go as far as a sort of ramdisk which syncs back to the harddisk slowly but steadily when the harddisk has time, in big cache. And it is not what I would suggest for DOS... Why not just use UIDE all the time? Or combine with SMARTDRV / NWCACHE for the write pooling... in which case it works sort of like UIDE or LBACACHE (except that it will also _natively_ work with non-INT 13h disks like USB and SCSI) Actually ancient SMARTDRV (dot sys) versions were int13 based. SCSI disks are rarely seen on PCs SATA or USB could also offer SCSI interfaces next to int 13... But I think for the moment, USB is the most useful non-int13 thing to cache. Because USB storage can be a lot of things: A floppy drive, CD / DVD / BD burner, harddisk, flash stick... Eric -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Bootable FreeDOS CD or USB Drive for Flashing Motherboard BIOS
Hi, On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 12:49 PM, Bernd Blaauw bbla...@home.nl wrote: Op 17-1-2012 7:15, Rugxulo schreef: You can convert an existing bootable DOS floppy image into a .iso for burning to CD with the following (DOS) freeware tool: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/downloads/mkbiso.zip Does this work for any size floppy image or only 1.44MB? I don't know, but I'm assuming 1.44 MB is what most people use these days, so it's probably moot (esp. since that's all I've tried with the tool). There's also MBOOTCD, but I don't think I ever tried it. http://www.fysnet.net/mtools.htm In principle BIOS flashing can be done from a freely distributable floppy disk/image, containing KERNEL.SYS, COMMAND.COM and FLASHROM.EXE (though the flash program by BIOS maker or motherboard manufacturer might be more reliable). He didn't specify any more details, so I don't know what he wants to put on there or what other requirements he has. Looks like he might try Alain's solution instead. (I would almost suggest some of my own floppy images, but they're too old and quirky.) Either way, it shouldn't be too hard for him to figure it out. He can always come ask again for further help if needed. -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Bootable FreeDOS CD or USB Drive for Flashing Motherboard BIOS
Op 18-1-2012 1:49, Rugxulo schreef: http://www.fysnet.net/mtools.htm That's a *very* interesting link, thanks!. Bedtime now though. I wish DISKCOPY was able to handle different floppy image sizes (360KB.IMG to 1.44MB floppy for example, or backup a (SHSURDRV?) harddisk image uncompressed). Kinda like WinImage. -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Big bootable disk for CD
Hi Alain, Thank you very much for this, I downloaded it. I'll play with it and see if I can get this BIOS flashing to work. It is clear that I need to develop technical knowledge of FreeDOS if I want to learn how to flash some motherboards properly. Again, many thanks! Bob On 1/17/12 7:12 PM, Alain Mouette wrote: Ah, ok, next message :) Well, you can use mine :) 1) Grab this: http://suporte.cosmodata.com.br/downloads/moni/CosmoData-M15020.iso 2) don't touch the COSMODAT dir... (no big deal, there is a password on sensitive files) 3) the FreeDOS/Disk is a perfect image of the boot disk, the CosmoDOS.img is the booting image. This iso works, you can burn it and test :) It is a version a few months older then FreeDOS 1.1. It is full GPL, all sources are included :) Alain Em 17-01-2012 21:07, Bob Cochran escreveu: Alain, I would like to try your method. I did something like this a few months ago but evidently missed a step since my CD would not really boot. This was to enable flashing a BIOS update on a motherboard. Can you tell me the names of all the files needed in your step 7? Perhaps I missed a file. Thanks so much! Bob Cochran On 1/17/12 2:27 PM, Alain Mouette wrote: I have done this some time ago, it may help. It is for CD, but it would be nice to convert it to SD-card... Alain Em 15-06-2011 11:51, Alain Mouette escreveu: How can I make a big (6Mb) bootable image to use in the CD? This is the only part of the CD that I can read on *any* machine, I am using isolinux) With lots of help fom Eric Auer, I managed to make a bootable image with FreeDOS. Here is how I did it: 1) Program needed: NASM, which I got from Debian $ sudo apt-get install nasm 2) program from Eric for the boot sector: http://ericauer.cosmodata.virtuaserver.com.br/soft/specials/sys-freedos-linux.zip create a directory ./sys-freedos-linux and expand it there 3) create file of the right size. 5760k was ok for me, there is some magic in the size and not everything will be ok. (more studies needed) $ dd if=/dev/zero of=FreeDOS.img count=11520 11520+0 records in 11520+0 records out 5898240 bytes (5.9 MB) copied, 0.408512 s, 14.4 MB/s 4) Prepare it with a FAT file system $ sudo mkdosfs -v FreeDOS.img mkdosfs 3.0.1 (23 Nov 2008) FreeDOS.img has 64 heads and 32 sectors per track, logical sector size is 512, using 0xf8 media descriptor, with 11520 sectors; file system has 2 12-bit FATs and 4 sectors per cluster. FAT size is 9 sectors, and provides 2867 clusters. Root directory contains 512 slots. Volume ID is 0cbb7ca7, no volume label. 5) compile and write a suitable boot sector. This is a smart script by Eric Auer that configures it with the appropiate parameters $ ./sys-freedos-linux/sys-freedos.pl --disk=FreeDOS.img DOS boot sector for FreeDOS.img will be created by: nasm -o /dev/stdout -dISFAT12 ./sys-freedos-linux/bootsecs/boot.asm Using FAT12. Partn offset 0, CHS *x64x32 Drive 0, (0x0, 0x29), SerNo CBB-7CA7, Strings ' ', 'FAT12 '. Boot sector successfully updated. 6) mount it in a directory $ mkdir bootimg $ sudo mount -v -o loop,uid=you,gid=you FreeDOS.img bootimg 7) copy into it KERNEL.SYS, COMMAND.COM and all other files 8) use it just the same way then the image made from a floppy, memdisk will recognize it. I used isolinux, here is how I created the iso: $ mkisofs -R -v -A FreeDOS big boot CD -V FreeDOS-V1.x \ -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat \ -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \ -o /mnt/dados/Segurver/FreeDOS-V1.x.iso \ /mnt/dados/CDROM Alain -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive
Re: [Freedos-user] Bootable FreeDOS CD or USB Drive for Flashing Motherboard BIOS
Well, what I want is to make a bootable SD-card with that same image... It is a standard isolinux image. Has anyone made that? Thanks, Alain Em 17-01-2012 22:49, Rugxulo escreveu: Hi, On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 12:49 PM, Bernd Blaauwbbla...@home.nl wrote: Op 17-1-2012 7:15, Rugxulo schreef: You can convert an existing bootable DOS floppy image into a .iso for burning to CD with the following (DOS) freeware tool: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/downloads/mkbiso.zip Does this work for any size floppy image or only 1.44MB? I don't know, but I'm assuming 1.44 MB is what most people use these days, so it's probably moot (esp. since that's all I've tried with the tool). There's also MBOOTCD, but I don't think I ever tried it. http://www.fysnet.net/mtools.htm In principle BIOS flashing can be done from a freely distributable floppy disk/image, containing KERNEL.SYS, COMMAND.COM and FLASHROM.EXE (though the flash program by BIOS maker or motherboard manufacturer might be more reliable). He didn't specify any more details, so I don't know what he wants to put on there or what other requirements he has. Looks like he might try Alain's solution instead. (I would almost suggest some of my own floppy images, but they're too old and quirky.) Either way, it shouldn't be too hard for him to figure it out. He can always come ask again for further help if needed. -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Bootable FreeDOS CD or USB Drive for Flashing Motherboard BIOS
Hello Bernd, Thank you so much for all your help with this. I need to practice the steps you list here, and I will start experimenting over the next few weeks. I really appreciate your taking the time to help me. I will try your method very soon on another device that could be flashed -- it is not a mainboard but a PCI Express adapter card. I vaguely remember searching for an ASPI driver in some context from a long time ago, I was helping my wife with something to do with her quite old computer. Bob On 1/17/12 6:22 PM, Bernd Blaauw wrote: Op 18-1-2012 0:04, Bob Cochran schreef: Thanks everyone for all the responses. I guess there is not a how-to for creating a bootable FreeDOS CD? That is, it takes fiddling and experimentation and a successful method has not been posted to the FreeDOS wiki? The point of greatest interest is what files are needed on the CD, exactly (including all their dependencies...so if command.com has dependencies, I'd need to include those.) Also how exactly to make the CD bootable in a FreeDOS acceptable way. Everything depends on what you want. Direct floppy emulation is the easiest, many Windows CD-writing programs support that (Imgburn for example). 1) Download a bootable floppy image (MSDOS or FreeDOS) 2) Open in WinImage, change size to 2.88MB or leave at 1.44MB 3) Delete all contents besides kernel.sys and command.com. 4) Insert flasher program and the BIOS file (if it even fits anymore on floppy nowadays). 5) Add an autoexec.bat that executes the flash program. Only if you're absolutely sure though and want to automate. This can ruin systems if things go wrong! 6) Save the image 7) Open Imgburn, Nero or whatever, create a bootable CD and supply the floppy image file you saved in step 6. My own requirements for FreeDOS CD go a lot further with regard to bootloader, floppy contents, detecting CD contents, executing it etc. Slightly more complex, I'm afraid. I really would like to be able to create such a CD and get the BIOS up to date. See if any of the various responses are enough to help you out. A bootdisk can generally be obtained from www.bootdisk.img (but those images are executables with WinImage compression, so you need to open WinImage, then select to open an image and look for your saved floppy image file) I deeply appreciate advice on how to really do it. I will fiddle with Alain's suggestion, I did something close to that a few months ago in a very similar effort but evidently missed some important step. Goodluck doing so. I'm working on creating a remaster ability in FreeDOS which has limited use because there's most CD-recording software in DOS is Linux-based and thus depends on something called ASPI, for which only paid legal solutions exist. Bob -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
