Well, I've been working on this awhile and have learned a lot. And most of
what I've learned is what others have been trying to tell me.
All the bootable CDs that I've seen have contained a floppy disk image.
This is what actually boots. During the boot process the embedded
AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS reload the drive and assigns it a DOS drive
letter. Only after that's done does the full content of the CD become
accessible to the OS.
MagicISO seems to do well with editing the CD image but not the FD image.
To get this to autorun, I have to be able to edit AUTOEXEC.BAT and
CONFIG.SYS. So MagicISO is not the answer. I've done a full scan and
detected no sign of the trojan that someone warned me about. Nonetheless, I
have removed this software from my computer. I did a full backup and saved
my system state last weekend, so I'm not too worried about it.
I'm now starting all over using the instructions found here:
http://www.k1ea.com/hints/Creating_a_Bootable_DOS_CD_V%201.5.pdf
I would like to do this using FreeDOS instead of DOS 7.1, though. The more
I play with FreeDOS the more I like its features. What actually happens if
I "install" FreeDOS on my Windows computer? I don't want to do that and end
up with a machine that won't boot XP.
Thanks,
Bruce
On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 1:35 AM, bruce.bowman tds.net
<bruce.bow...@tds.net>wrote:
> I'll try to answer some of the questions here.
>
> My program is a fairly simple role-playing game. It was originally written
> in Turbo C for DOS, and reads/writes to disk using DOS (not BIOS) calls. It
> runs in 256 palletized colors on a 640x480 console. While running, it
> frequently reads image files off disk, and for that reason won't fit on (or
> reliably run from) a floppy. I want to share it with friends such that all
> they have to do is insert a CD and boot up. Asking them to load emulators,
> other shells or OSs, or otherwise follow intimidating instructions won't
> meet my objectives.
>
> Having said that, I've tried DosBox, just for my own purposes. My program
> runs very slowly in it, no matter what settings I use; and for some reason
> the graphics palette does not get reset properly. I've downloaded VM too,
> but haven't tried that yet, and for reasons already mentioned I probably
> won't.
>
> The DFSee CD image that someone else recommended looks like something I
> can modify for my purposes. I've already booted off of that and confirmed
> that the game runs well...here at home, anyway. And it seems to detect and
> do i/o on my FAT32 partition just fine. NTFS? I'll worry about that later.
>
> Floppy disks? I realizing I'm backtracking by using DOS instead of a GUI,
> but am loath to go all the way to 80s technology. A bootable thumb drive,
> though, intrigues me -- because I can write to it. But how do you make it
> show up? If I stick one in a USB port and restart, my BIOS menu doesn't
> show it as a drive. A boot image that requires a loader before it's seen by
> the BIOS sounds like a real chicken-or-egg problem.
>
> Thanks to everyone for your suggestions. If I go silent and unresponsive
> for a day or two it's because I'm either modifying that CD image...or maybe
> even doing something in real life.
>
> Regards,
> Bruce
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 2:29 PM, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> Just for clarity, since I am not exactly sure what you meant,
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 9:28 PM, bruce.bowman tds.net
>> <bruce.bow...@tds.net> wrote:
>> >
>> > I have an old DOS program that I wrote and still want to run, but it
>> uses
>> > VESA 3.0 SVGA graphics, which are not [fully] supported by later
>> versions of
>> > Windoze.* To make matters worse, the program writes to disk during
>> > operation, and no modern computer has FAT16 partitions anymore.
>>
>> Who is the target of this program? You? Other? WinXP only? Native DOS?
>> Or just anybody with a PC?
>>
>> IIRC, VESA 3 didn't add much to the standard (refresh rates?). Is that
>> what you meant? Or did you really mean LFB (VESA 2)?
>>
>> Does your program *have* to run atop FAT? Does it write to the hard
>> disk directly? Or just it just use normal DOS (file) calls?
>>
>> Regarding porting to DirectX (or SDL) or whatever, what was the app
>> written in? You could probably switch pretty easily if you used Turbo
>> Pascal or Turbo C. Heck, even Allegro would probably simplify things
>> (if you still wanted partial DOS support).
>>
>> I'm not exactly sure why you "seem" to want to run natively instead of
>> emulated. DOSBox supports VESA, and VirtualBox can (sometimes) work
>> (VT-X!). DOSEMU ain't too shabby either for gfx. But if you're trying
>> to run under WinXP explicitly (or worse, anything newer, sigh), you're
>> probably barking up the wrong tree. :-(
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Sent from my meager, humble desktop computer.
>
>
--
Sent from my meager, humble desktop computer.
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