Op 19-1-2012 21:46, Alain Mouette schreef: > The MKISOFS is the one that brings it all toghether. The freeDOS image > is passed as an argument to be loaded in memory and then executed.
If creating a direct (floppy/harddisk) emulation CD then you'll indeed need to pass the name of the floppy/hdd image file. The isolinux situation from FreeDOS 1.1 is slightly easier in some way: Rename your harddisk image to FDBOOT.IMG and replace the already existing 360KB FDBOOT.IMG file by it. Next recreate the CD. Boot sequence for most Isolinux based CDs is: 1) BIOS 2) CDROM bootsector (boot.catalog) 3) Isolinux.bin 4) Isolinux.cfg 5) Optionally, some menu interface module (menu.c32 , vesamenu.c32) 6) User's input (if in menu mode or interactive mode) 7) The kernel/program belonging to whichever choice the user made For Linux distributions step 7 consists of the Linux kernel and some initial ramdisk. DOS needs to boot from a FAT filesystem. As that's not present, emulation is needed. For that, the MEMDISK module is loaded by Isolinux, which then loads whichever floppy/harddisk imagefile you specified. For FreeDOS 1.1, it's FDBOOT.IMG, and MEMDISK causes this floppy emulation to be present in system memory rather than a 'read-only tiny part of the CD'. Finally, the space on an emulated FAT disk is usually limited. For that reason most content of the CD can't be directly accessed. That means the emulated bootdisk (imagefile) needs to load CD-ROM drivers. Nowadays with USB and everything, we can't rely on CD-ROM being present on an IDE/ATAPI controller thus standard drivers (UIDE) won't work in all possible situations. Luckily the CD-ROM booted and started ISOLINUX.BIN in "non-emulation" mode, and the ELTORITO.SYS driver works quite universally then. (Loading DOS USB drivers can ruin this again for example though). > Anyway, this was a good feedback, I am planning a FreeDOS release withou > my programs, and I will make that more clear and more specific, I gesse > that the scrip that puts it all toghether may help. I've not looked at your ISO yet, only that one of Georg Potthast (DOS-USB demo) and a game CD by Fritz. >> I followed the instructions below from Alain, using my Fedora 14 (Linux) >> box. I didn't have 100% success but I am much closer! I created an image >> file in the manner described below. I wondered where to find command.com >> and kernel.sys...so I downloaded the FreeDOS iso for 1.1 and found those >> files in the "one disk" folder. I copied them to my image and then >> copied over my BIOS update files which are packaged in a directory. Ah yeah the Linux 'sys' script solves the bootsector issue :) >> However I ran into trouble at Step 8: specifically, I couldn't figure >> out how to independently generate an "isolinux" folder or where to find >> isolinux to start with. So I copied over the "ISOLINUX" folder I found >> inside the FreeDOS 1.1 iso, and did some experimenting with the >> arguments to mkisofs. This got me a nice small iso image which I burned >> to CD. Easiest experiment is to get 7Zip and FreeDOS 1.1, extract all files from the ISO and try to recreate it again (be aware of write-protected / read-only files as they're copied from CD..). >> >> I then booted from this cd and got...the FreeDOS 1.1 installation screen >> in all its glory! You can modify the isolinux.cfg text configuration file anyway you like. >> >> In Alain's recipe below, it is not obvious to me how the FreeDOS.img >> file is connected to isolinux. I played with the tab key to see the boot >> arguments for the CD I made, and I get the impression that FreeDOS.img >> would be treated as the initrd= argument to isolinux. Am I right about >> that? In other words, isolinux takes the FreeDOS.img file, loads it into >> memory, and then passes control to it? correct, isolinux -> memdisk -> fdboot.img -> DOS >> Clearly, I need to read up more about using isolinux. I am very grateful >> to all of you for your help and advice. I'm making progress! I intend to automate all of this a bit in the future. Making progress already :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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
