Op 4-1-2012 2:38, Pete Batard schreef:
> If that's the case, then I will feel obligated to ask what you guys
> would like to see added to Rufus, to better suit your needs. ;)

Getting USB drives bootable can be a real challenge (unpartitioned 
versus partitioned, geometry, BIOS-quirks, maximum compatibility etc).

> pretty clear =>  Rufus is supported on XP or later only.

fair enough.

> ReactOS is a bit different, as unlike the others, I guess it is actively
> supported. However, I haven't really used it so far, and wonder how many
> people would be interested. Then again, if somebody else wants to
> check/add ReactOS support to Rufus, they are also more than welcome to
> submit patches.

http://www.reactos.org/getbuilds/
However this alpha-state ReactOS doesn't have any type of USB-support 
yet. Some NT-compatible stack was present but only supported keyboard 
and mouse. Over time it will change likely.
( http://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=9937#p86219 )

> The one thing I wouldn't mind adding is the ability to copy a bootable
> ISO on the USB drive (eg full FreeDOS, Linux live CD or even Windows
> installation ISO) and boot from it. I think people are growing tired of
> having to burn CDs or DVDs, or even install an optical drive on their
> target platform, and Universal USB Installer [1] seems to be able to do
> something like that to some extent (though it doesn't support the
> FreeDOS ISO), by extracting the files from the image onto a FAT32
> partition and then adding the relevant bootloader.

You mean your RUFUS program can take an ISO, a CD-drive or the current 
drive it's running from (if it's a CD-drive) and copy it either contents 
or the ISO to USB Flash Device?

I wonder if the so-called ISOHYBRID feature can work for DOS. It's a 
single imagefile that can act as partitioned HDD image as well as 
CD-image. [http://gparted-forum.surf4.info/viewtopic.php?id=13581]. It 
allows booting an image as ISO or as HDD, thus also allows writing the 
image to USB Disk in raw-mode. Creating another partition out of the 
left-over device space is an entirely different matter.

As for FreeDOS to USB, most convenient is either extracting contents or 
copying the ISO entirely, added by installing SYSLINUX (or GRUB) and 
using MEMDISK to load the ISO. Then you get a CD in system memory that 
can act as installation/live medium. Drawback is that DOS kernel will 
enumerate USB disk as C:. Disabling boot-time partition driveletter 
assignment could help (patches required for FreeDOS kernel), leaving 
things for runtime (except no run-time driver exists for that).

> If it's not too complex, why not... I think I should have most of the
> elements needed already, though there are probably some quirks to FAT12
> formatting. I have now created an enhancement for that.
> Is there still much demand for FreeDOS bootable floppies?

Ancient systems only I think. My preference would be a bootdisk with 
Syslinux, loading iPXE and then installing FreeDOS on local system with 
internet as source CD-image.
[ http://lists.ipxe.org/pipermail/ipxe-devel/2011-August/000834.html ].

Alternative is a bootdisk with Michael Brutman's "mtcp" programs so ISO 
can be downloaded by HTGET (or WGET/CURL/FTP)..to harddisk I suppose, if 
there's enough space, and installation started.

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