> On Jan 17, 2025, at 2:46 PM, Bernd Böckmann via Freedos-devel > <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > > >> Am 17.01.2025 um 18:20 schrieb Jerome Shidel via Freedos-devel >> <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>: >> >> If a partition is set active or a MBR is written when partitioning is >> performed, this would be changes in the behavior of FDISK. > > Well, the MBR is always written when a primary partition is created ;) > However you are right that there is a difference between Free FDISK 1.4 and > Microsoft FDISK on the one side, and Free FDISK 1.3 on the other. The former > write a proper IPL when the signature 55 AA is NOT found in sector zero > before writing the new partition table. Free FDISK 1.3 fills the IPL area > with zero instead.
I was imprecisely referring to the boot code simple as MBR. Technically, all that stuff (including the partition table) are in that sector. > > What might have happened to Paul is that VMware contains some heuristic to > detect a non-valid IPL despite the BIOS signature 55 AA being there. I have > to check that. > > Not writing an IPL like Free FDISK 1.3 is however not a good idea, because > many BIOSes do NOT contain a heuristic to check if the IPL is valid, and then > simply "execute" the non-IPL if the BIOS signature is found. So I tend to > rather not change the behaviour as it is now unless absolutely necessary. > > But, the user should not have problems installing FreeDOS under VMware > because of this. The normal procedure would be to choose the right boot > order. But it seems that under VMware Workstation it is not that easy to > accomplish. So let me think for a while about it. There are several options. > > a) If it is strictly necessary that no IPL is written, I could introduce a > /noipl command line parameter that prevents FDISK from writing a proper IPL. > Should be easy to adapt the FreeDOS install batch to this. Since the installer could simply use V8Power Tools’ VINFO command to detect VMware, it would be a simple add specifically for VMware (or probably all detected VMs). > > b) Maybe the installed boot loader (bootnorm.asm) could be adapted to tell > the BIOS to try the next device from the order of boot devices? Does anyone > know if that is possible? > > c) some other option a fail to see right now... > > > Bernd > > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-devel mailing list > Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
