[Freedos-user] Big bootable disk for CD
Hi, I am still having problems making an intaller from CD. I came across an HP machine (MS219BR) that no drive recognizes and also external USB CD drivers. So... How can I make a big (6Mb) bootable image to use in the CD? This is the only part of the CD that I can read on *any* machine, I am using syslinux) thanks, Alain -- EditLive Enterprise is the world's most technically advanced content authoring tool. Experience the power of Track Changes, Inline Image Editing and ensure content is compliant with Accessibility Checking. http://p.sf.net/sfu/ephox-dev2dev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Big bootable disk for CD
Op 15-6-2011 16:51, Alain Mouette schreef: Hi, I am still having problems making an intaller from CD. I came across an HP machine (MS219BR) that no drive recognizes and also external USB CD drivers. So... I'm not understanding your situation, got some more details? Seems like you've got a non-IDE/SATA optical drive (thus COM/LPT/USB/SCSI/IEEE1394 etc) or maybe SATA with AHCI mode enabled, which DOS won't recognise in all situations. You could add the FreeDOS ISO file to a bootCD which has Isolinux as bootloader and then have Isolinux/Memdisk load the ISO to system memory. The DOS boot image inside of the inner ISO would have to have the ELTORITO.SYS driver so it can find the 'in-memory' CD image. FreeDOS 1.0 has the boot sequence like this: * Isolinux -- Memdisk -- FDBOOT.IMG (virtual A: , stored in memory, writable) -- driver for physical CDROM unit -- rest of FreeDOS CD -- Setup/Live environment Suggested: * Isolinux -- Memdisk -- FDBASECD.ISO -- Isolinux -- Memdisk -- FDBOOT.IMG -- ELTORITO.SYS -- FDBASECD.ISO's contents as FreeDOS CD -- Setup/Live environment Come to think of it, the ELTORITO.SYS driver should simply already have found your booted CD, as it only loads for each non-emulation mode self-starting CD (as Isolinux is). How can I make a big (6Mb) bootable image to use in the CD? Some larger images do exist, [ http://bootcd.narod.ru/images_e.htm ] has them listed, including a picture as proof: http://bootcd.narod.ru/fd70_e.htm You'll likely need to prove C/H/S (cilinder/head/sector) details to Isolinux then if using these non-standard sized images. Linux can easily modify such images, for Windows I guess you'll need a program named WinImage (created by Gilles Vollant) This is the only part of the CD that I can read on *any* machine, I am using syslinux) Assume you're using Isolinux :) Using syslinux is entirely possible but involves floppy emulation, with the floppy image containing Syslinux. Quite a waste of assigning driveletter A: to it then :) -- EditLive Enterprise is the world's most technically advanced content authoring tool. Experience the power of Track Changes, Inline Image Editing and ensure content is compliant with Accessibility Checking. http://p.sf.net/sfu/ephox-dev2dev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] New release of DOSUTILS package
On Mon, 13 Jun 2011 22:43:00 Eric Auer wrote: For those who read mails but do not follow all URLs, and to already give some feedback and plug ads for similar tools, DOSUTILS contains: First of all thank you for your feed back. Though i think some additional comments could be useful :-) ASKECHO - prompt for user input Note that FreeCOM command.com has a special SET for this. That's true, however DOSUTILS can be used with ANY kind of DOS even with such less advanced versions like MS-DOS 6.22 which lack this feature :-) RPN - perform integer calculations If you need floating point: The 1024 byte(!) calc387.com will be fun for you. For example Rugxulo's Ruffidea distro contains a copy of the tool :-) True, RPN can't do floating point. And even though it can be used interactively, its main purpose is to do (more or less) simple calculations in batch procedures, like numeric loop counters, comparison of two numbers and the like. And i can hardly imagine that some will seriously attempt to implement a fast fourier transform as a batch procedure :-) so the lack of floating point may not hurt too much. PIPESET - store the output of other programs in environment variables In a limited way, yet another exotic SET feature of the FreeCOM command.com can help you to do similar things. Can you pipe into FreeCOM's SET command? And PIPESET can do even more, it can cut a specific item out of the data stream (e.g. the size of a specific file from the output of the DIR command) SELECT - user menu and directory browser Dosemu long ago came with a directory browser called LCD which is about 15kB and has no features apart from letting you go to a dir using the cursor keys when you call it... I admit i do not know LCD, i had WINDOWS standard file dialoge in mind when developing this utility. So if you need a comfortable way to interactively specify a file from within a batch procedure then SELECT may become your friend. FORM - a very versatile dialogue utility for batch procedures FAM - automated text modification Similar to SED? FAM is _very_ remotely similar to AWK (but it is a single command line tool, while AWK is actually a script prcessor which can also be used on the command line. In addition AWK is strongly based on regular expressions while FAM uses a totally different principle, actually it was a spin-off from PIPSET. FORM is a totally different beast. It is a comfortable user interface for batch procedures. It displays a form, whichs layout can be very flexibly configured and returns the user's input in one ore more environent variables. One possible application could be the user dialogue for a configuration procedure but it is not limited to that purpose. SCRDUMP - a utility to dump parts of the screen to a file With a hotkey as TSR, I assume? Nope. Again this utility is most useful within batch files (e.g. autoexec.bat). Typically it is called twice, once before and a second time right after the command whichs output is to be copied to a file INVOKE - invoke program and report the error code it returned (test and debugging aid) You can use %ERRORLEVEL% in FreeCOM command.com for that, Right, but again, not all incarnations of DOS properly support %ERRORLEVEL%. Furthemore, the latest version allows as a side effect to re-direct stderr, which is otherwise not so easily done. I know, that not everyone is a fan of written documentation, but in this case i strongly recommend to read the files DOSUTILS.TXT and FORM.TXT they tell much more details than could be mentioned here. ___ Schon gehört? WEB.DE hat einen genialen Phishing-Filter in die Toolbar eingebaut! http://produkte.web.de/go/toolbar -- EditLive Enterprise is the world's most technically advanced content authoring tool. Experience the power of Track Changes, Inline Image Editing and ensure content is compliant with Accessibility Checking. http://p.sf.net/sfu/ephox-dev2dev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] New release of DOSUTILS package
Hi! RPN - perform integer calculations If you need floating point: The 1024 byte(!) calc387.com will be fun for you. For example Rugxulo's Ruffidea distro contains a copy of the tool :-) True, RPN can't do floating point. And even though it can be used interactively, its main purpose is to do (more or less) simple calculations in batch procedures, like numeric loop counters, comparison of two numbers and the like. I have some add/sub tool, possibly in the same download as calc387 (which is not by me) which outputs the result as errorlevel which in turn can be useful for things like the loop counter you mention. As my page is still (since ages...) down, use the cosmodata mirror. http://ericauer.cosmodata.virtuaserver.com.br/soft/specials/factorial-calc387-add.zip As said, one of the good things about calc387 is the tiny size. PIPESET - store the output of other programs in environment variables In a limited way, yet another exotic SET feature of the FreeCOM command.com can help you to do similar things. Can you pipe into FreeCOM's SET command? And PIPESET can do even more, it can cut a specific item out of the data stream Yes you can but no SET can only take the first or last line of the output and put that in an env variable of your choice afair. So PIPESET can do a lot more than the built-in FreeCOM tricks. I admit i do not know LCD, i had WINDOWS standard file dialoge in mind when developing this utility. So if you need a comfortable way to interactively specify a file from within a batch procedure then SELECT may become your friend. Sounds very friendly :-) SCRDUMP - a utility to dump parts of the screen to a file With a hotkey as TSR, I assume? Nope. Again this utility is most useful within batch files (e.g. autoexec.bat). Typically it is called twice, once before and a second time right after the command whichs output is to be copied to a file A hotkey / TSR print screen to file tool would be nice, though. Maybe somebody on this list can recommend a nice tool for this? Furthemore, the latest version [of INVOKE] allows as a side effect to re-direct stderr, which is otherwise not so easily done. Which can indeed be quite useful :-) Regards, Eric -- EditLive Enterprise is the world's most technically advanced content authoring tool. Experience the power of Track Changes, Inline Image Editing and ensure content is compliant with Accessibility Checking. http://p.sf.net/sfu/ephox-dev2dev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] New release of DOSUTILS package
SCRDUMP - a utility to dump parts of the screen to a file With a hotkey as TSR, I assume? Nope. Again this utility is most useful within batch files (e.g. autoexec.bat). Typically it is called twice, once before and a second time right after the command whichs output is to be copied to a file A hotkey / TSR print screen to file tool would be nice, though. Maybe somebody on this list can recommend a nice tool for this? You can look at my PRTSCR utility which works with the PrintScreen key, available on my web site: http://bretjohnson.us It has quite a few options to let you filter the output to some degree (like skipping menu lines at the top or bottom of the screen, or skipping blank lines in the middle of the screen). It also lets you redirect the PrintScreen output to a device (like NUL or LPT3), instead of to a file. If you do multiple PrintScreens, it keeps appending the output to the same file instead of creating a separate file each time. -- EditLive Enterprise is the world's most technically advanced content authoring tool. Experience the power of Track Changes, Inline Image Editing and ensure content is compliant with Accessibility Checking. http://p.sf.net/sfu/ephox-dev2dev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Big bootable disk for CD
Em 15-06-2011 11:51, Alain Mouette escreveu: How can I make a big (6Mb) bootable image to use in the CD? This is the only part of the CD that I can read on *any* machine, I am using isolinux) With lots of help fom Eric Auer, I managed to make a bootable image with FreeDOS. Here is how I did it: 1) Program needed: NASM, which I got from Debian $ sudo apt-get install nasm 2) program from Eric for the boot sector: http://ericauer.cosmodata.virtuaserver.com.br/soft/specials/sys-freedos-linux.zip create a directory ./sys-freedos-linux and expand it there 3) create file of the right size. 5760k was ok for me, there is some magic in the size and not everything will be ok. (more studies needed) $ dd if=/dev/zero of=FreeDOS.img count=11520 11520+0 records in 11520+0 records out 5898240 bytes (5.9 MB) copied, 0.408512 s, 14.4 MB/s 4) Prepare it with a FAT file system $ sudo mkdosfs -v FreeDOS.img mkdosfs 3.0.1 (23 Nov 2008) FreeDOS.img has 64 heads and 32 sectors per track, logical sector size is 512, using 0xf8 media descriptor, with 11520 sectors; file system has 2 12-bit FATs and 4 sectors per cluster. FAT size is 9 sectors, and provides 2867 clusters. Root directory contains 512 slots. Volume ID is 0cbb7ca7, no volume label. 5) compile and write a suitable boot sector. This is a smart script by Eric Auer that configures it with the appropiate parameters $ ./sys-freedos-linux/sys-freedos.pl --disk=FreeDOS.img DOS boot sector for FreeDOS.img will be created by: nasm -o /dev/stdout -dISFAT12 ./sys-freedos-linux/bootsecs/boot.asm Using FAT12. Partn offset 0, CHS *x64x32 Drive 0, (0x0, 0x29), SerNo CBB-7CA7, Strings ' ', 'FAT12 '. Boot sector successfully updated. 6) mount it in a directory $ mkdir bootimg $ sudo mount -v -o loop,uid=you,gid=you FreeDOS.img bootimg 7) copy into it KERNEL.SYS, COMMAND.COM and all other files 8) use it just the same way then the image made from a floppy, memdisk will recognize it. I used isolinux, here is how I created the iso: $ mkisofs -R -v -A FreeDOS big boot CD -V FreeDOS-V1.x \ -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat \ -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \ -o /mnt/dados/Segurver/FreeDOS-V1.x.iso \ /mnt/dados/CDROM Alain -- EditLive Enterprise is the world's most technically advanced content authoring tool. Experience the power of Track Changes, Inline Image Editing and ensure content is compliant with Accessibility Checking. http://p.sf.net/sfu/ephox-dev2dev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] New release of DOSUTILS package
You can look at my PRTSCR utility which works with the PrintScreen key, available on my web site: http://bretjohnson.us Oops! There is indeed a PRTSCR utility there, but it is an older, simpler version that doesn't have all of the features I mentioned. The version with all of the new features is still in beta on my computer. I will try to clean it up and get it onto the web site in the next few days. -- EditLive Enterprise is the world's most technically advanced content authoring tool. Experience the power of Track Changes, Inline Image Editing and ensure content is compliant with Accessibility Checking. http://p.sf.net/sfu/ephox-dev2dev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Mouse must move
If certain programs are loaded immediately after booting, the computer appears to be locked, but after moving the mouse everything is back to normal, and the machine will not lock again until the next boot. Two examples of such programs are: the WBAT menu by Horst Schäffer, and the DosZip file manager. I think there are several others but I do not remember now. For months and months this will happen every single time the computer is booted and these programs are loaded, but then suddenly the problem is gone for no apparent reason, to be back again after some more months. It could be related to changes in FDCONFIG.SYS and FDAUTO.BAT that we occasionally do, but I could never identify the implicated lines. I have observed this in several computers, and for the last several years. If I remember correctly, it also happened when I still was a MS-DOS user. The problem does not manifest if the mouse is physically disconnected. Is there a way of fixing that? Marcos -- EditLive Enterprise is the world's most technically advanced content authoring tool. Experience the power of Track Changes, Inline Image Editing and ensure content is compliant with Accessibility Checking. http://p.sf.net/sfu/ephox-dev2dev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
