Hi :-)

> No-emulation boot with FreeDOS and without memdisk would be cool.

Maybe. But MEMDISK works fine, too.

> Is it possible to inject eltorito.sys and shsucdx into the kernel?

You would need eltorito.sys source code first, and have
to be aware that shsucdx is about 8 kB (6 kB UPXed, 6 kB
or more in RAM depending on how you load it). All this
would have to fit (preferably) into the resident-in-HMA
part of the kernel, which is about 40 kB now: The rest
of the 64 kB HMA is used for BUFFERS. If you do not have
enough HMA space left, you have to put BUFFERS in low RAM.
Eltorito.sys itself is quite small afair, maybe 2 kB...?


That would probably be less efficient than putting the CD
drivers there... In addition, having ELTORITO and SHSUCDX
in the kernel will mean that you cannot use the driver in
other situations than booting from CD/DVD. If you want to
use CD/DVD in other situations, you have to load a normal
SHSUCDX later, basically spending the RAM for it twice.

And of course: CD/DVD infrastructure in kernel means that
you have no or at least no reasonably useful cache for it.

In short: A very exotic situation :-). Linux also has many
drivers in separate files (loadable modules) and puts them
into a boot ramdisk, as this gives more flexibility and
less wasted space compared to having them all in the main
kernel binary - which is possible there, too, but only for
people who really want to hand-tune their system a lot ;-).



Some other ideas:

- a simplified read-only, 8.3 filename, no-subdirectory
  eltorito boot CD/DVD driver would already be enough to
  let DOS load further drivers for full CD/DVD access...

- a special boot ramdisk could be added to the kernel binary
  before compressing it. kernel code could access it, say,
  as B: drive, using the already built-in FAT drivers...

The latter idea is useful when you have a boot sector that
can load ONE file. For example a CD/DVD boot sector which
is able to load the kernel via eltorito :-). The former
idea probably adds more complexity to the kernel than the
latter idea, but is easier to use. The latter idea would
need extra tools to create the boot ramdisk, but you will
not need full recompiles to modify the ramdisk contents.

Eric





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