Hi! To answer Ray's original question once more:
I have installed three different Linux partitions. None have created a
boot manager. There is an empty 2G space at the front. Can I make it
Fat32 and put FreeDOS on it?
TY
Ray
Normally, FreeDOS only can boot from primary partitions,
so if you can make one of those FAT16 or FAT32, then you
can boot FreeDOS from some CD/DVD or USB flash stick and
use SYS C: to make the partition itself bootable, then
run for example "grub-install" or similar in your Linux to
let the boot manager of Linux update the list of available
operating systems on your computer.
Make sure to NOT use our FreeDOS installer wizard when
you boot FreeDOS from CD, DVD or USB flash storage!!
The wizard only lets you delete the previous contents
of your computer to install FreeDOS. Your Linux would
be gone if you do that.
Instead, create the FAT partition for DOS using Linux,
only use DOS to run SYS, and simply use Linux to unzip
all the DOS apps you want from the FreeDOS install
medium to a DOS directory on your FAT partition later.
You will also have to write a config sys and autoexec bat
in this case, but I assume DOS fans can easily do that :-)
If you use a Linux text editor to create your DOS config
and autoexec, make sure to select DOS style line breaks.
There might also be an expert mode of the install wizard
which lets you install DOS to an existing C: drive after
booting from a FreeDOS install medium WITHOUT destroying
the other contents of your computer, but I do not know
how you activate and use the expert mode of the installer.
Note that modern Linux distros tend to hide the boot menu,
so you may have to do things like "keep shift pressed while
booting" or "hit ESC at the right moment" or similar to let
the menu show. Or edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to add a line
"timeout 10" or comment out the hiddenmenu option, or even
better, edit /etc/default/grub (different syntax) which is
often used to define how grub-install automatically creates
menu.lst, so it will be better to NOT edit menu.lst manually.
Also note that if your Linux boots the EFI / UEFI way and
not the MBR / BIOS way, then you cannot simply boot DOS:
FreeDOS would need a loadable BIOS to work from EFI, also
called a CSM, and it would have to understand EFI style
partitions. I think some kernel experts here have started
to experiment with EFI partitions for FreeDOS already :-)
Others have been working on generic CMS to run DOS on EFI:
https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=23205&page=0&order=time&category=0
However, for non experts, you probably only want to use
FreeDOS either in FAT / BIOS context or in a window in
Linux, such as https://github.com/dosemu2/dosemu2
Best regards, Eric
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
