Hi Jim, > Am 02.06.2024 um 01:45 schrieb Jim Hall via Freedos-devel > <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>: >
> (I created a single partition on the 1.9G drive, formatted and > installed "plain DOS" to that, everything works fine) > How did you create the partition? Did you run FDISK or did you re-use an existing 1.9G partition shipped with the original image? > It stops at "Loading FreeDOS" and just hangs there This comes from the (FAT32 LBA?) volume boot code installed by the SYS command. There can be several reasons why it fails, the most probable being the partition layout. But it may also be that the 386 does not support LBA, and SYS puts the LBA-only loader onto the disk while running under QEMU. This might make the VBR code stuck in an infinite loop, according to the source. Or, there is some incompatibility with the BIOS... You might try doing a "SYS X: /FORCE:CHS" under QEMU and then testing again with your 386 to see if the FAT32 CHS loader works. This is not documented via SYS /? but should work according to the source. You can find out if LBA is supported by starting FDISK via FDISK /XO on the 386. In the top line there will be an indication "LBA" if FDISK (and probably the other FreeDOS parts) make use of it. If the 10MB partition can be booted from, we have to take into account that this is a FAT16 partition, and accordingly the FAT12/16 volume boot code is installed. This supports both LBA and non-LBA access. Jim, can you upload the non-working image and the working 10MB test image, so I can have a look at the relevant data structures (MBR etc.)? https://nextcloud.iww.rwth-aachen.de/index.php/s/BRXqZDGasw74NN9 What BIOS is this machine using? As Jerome said, the FreeDOS installer will re-use an existing partition layout. So what you can try (not 100% sure you already did that): start with an empty 1.9G image and install FreeDOS onto it via QEMU. The installer will create and format a partition. Then, try to boot it with your 386. Thinking of this LBA, non-LBA thing we might investigate if it is possible to merge the LBA and non-LBA FAT32 VBR code into one. But that is for another topic. We also might replace the loaders with some other one. If I remember correctly ECMs lDOS loaders have the capability... Bernd _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
