On 13-Apr-10 18:12:26, Michael Evans wrote: > On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 12:04 PM, zongo saiba <zongosa...@gmail.com> > wrote: >> Hi, >> >> I am trying to make a bootable floppy disk image big enough to contain >> my >> bios upgrade, flash utility and the fdos kernel in it. _My bios >> upgrade >> itself is 4M. >> The one I originally created was of 144. Therefore too small to >> accomodate >> the soft i needed to put put in it. >> This is the process I have been using to create that boottable floopy >> image: >> >> $ mkdir /tmp/floppy >> I am then mounting that image as such containing "fdos" with the >> "loop" file >> system and vfat: >> $ sudo mount -t vfat -o loop FDOEM.144 /tmp/floppy >> Then I need to copy my bios update and the flash utility but this bios >> update is 4M. The bootable image is only 1.4M. >> >> Could anyone tell me how to make that bootable image bigger ? >> >> Kind Regards, >> >> zongo >> > > You can make a 2880 KB image and see if your bios supports it via > something like memdisk (part of syslinux). You probably won't be able > to find hardware that actually supports real floppies that big, but it > is a good way of stuffing things that large on to a CD or boot-menu. > > Of course if you're already going CD/boot menu you can look in to > using cdrom drivers and the CD for storage, or just emulating a hard > disk image. Using a USB flash drive is even easier since some modern > BIOSes will emulate a hard disk over the native stick.
On somewhat older Linux systems, at least, you used to be able to format a floppy to much higher density than 1440. For instance, on a Red Hat from 2003 which I have, ls /dev/fd0* gives /dev/fd0 /dev/fd0h1476 /dev/fd0H720 /dev/fd0u1743 /dev/fd0u3840 /dev/fd0CompaQ /dev/fd0h1494 /dev/fd0h880 /dev/fd0u1760 /dev/fd0u720 /dev/fd0d360 /dev/fd0h1660 /dev/fd0u1040 /dev/fd0u1840 /dev/fd0u800 /dev/fd0D360 /dev/fd0h360 /dev/fd0u1120 /dev/fd0u1920 /dev/fd0u820 /dev/fd0D720 /dev/fd0H360 /dev/fd0u1440 /dev/fd0u2880 /dev/fd0u830 /dev/fd0h1200 /dev/fd0h410 /dev/fd0u1660 /dev/fd0u3200 /dev/fd0h1440 /dev/fd0h420 /dev/fd0u1680 /dev/fd0u3520 /dev/fd0H1440 /dev/fd0h720 /dev/fd0u1722 /dev/fd0u360 and /dev/fd0u3840 would be for density 3840 instead of 1440. It needs the floppy drive hardware to be able to support such disks, and for the floppy itself to be of the right kind. As I recall, you just put the floppy in the drive (assumed fd0) and then something like fdformat /dev/fd0u3840 and it gets done. I've certainly used this in the past for 2880. However, on a much more recent Debian (2008) all I get from ls /dev/fd* is /dev/fd0 (However, possibly I could force it if I wanted to by explicitly creating the devices). Of course, even 3840 may not be enough for your needs (though it is getting close to 4MB). Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.hard...@manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 13-Apr-10 Time: 22:56:02 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
