Re: [Freedos-user] Concept behind RUFUS

[Kenneth Davis]

On Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 2:11 PM Aitor Santamaría  wrote:

> Hello,
>
> To those that have used/experience with RUFUS: what is the concept behind
> it?
> I don't get a clear picture of how this software operates, either reading
> the site or the wikipedia:
>
> It makes "bootable USB" and supports "a variety of ISO", so
> (a) does it make truly bootable drives, like "SYS D:", where the drive
> gets a OS file (rewritable) distribution, after transferring the files to
> the drive (mimicking a INSTALL)?
>

kinda, yes

(b) copies the ISO into the drive, and somehow mounts the ISO file and
> boots from there, thereby creating a read-only in memory drive?
>

no, during creation it reads the files from image and copies them to the
writable FAT or NTFS formatted disk.  Similar to if you formatted and SYS
drive, then mount CD image, copy files to disk.  Unless it is in dd mode,
then it's more of a disk image sector by sector copy to the USB drive -
this allows filesystems on the drive that Windows does not read or write to
but requires the image already be setup to be bootable from a USB disk.

(c) ...
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Aitor
>
> __
>

Rufus can be used as a dd or rawrite tool for Windows to USB drives. It can
also convert isolinux based CD images to boot from USB while keeping their
options intact. There are some special handling for creating Windows
install media. And to bring it back to FreeDOS, it includes latest FreeDOS
kernel and command.com from FreeDOS distribution enabling creating DOS
bootable USB disks easily. I use it and will copy over latest kernel build
to boot on real hardware.

Basically you start it, select either FreeDOS or an ISO image, the USB
drive you want to make bootable,  it clears/creates the partition table,
formats the drive,  writes boot sector, copies all the files over, replaces
isolinux with syslinux and voila bootable disk.  Or it works like
rawriye/dd and copies image file directly to disk but then the image must
already include boot sector to work.  There are some safety checks so you
don't overwrite non-removable drives and lots of other details I am
glossing over.  The author is very approachable and patient with users and
does an excellent job developing it (its open source so easy to follow its
development).

Jeremy

>
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Re: [Freedos-user] Setting up a Boot CD

[Kenneth Davis]

On Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 3:47 PM John R. Sowden 
wrote:

> I am looking to set up a boot CD to run FreeDOS.  Can I access FAT 32
> Partitions from this Boot Disk?
>
> John
>
.



Yes, as long as you boot the FAT32 enabled kernel, then it should be able
to access FAT32 partitions fine.  The kernel scans for supported partitions
during it's initialization phase and will assign drive letters to found
partitions no matter how the kernel was loaded (drive letter order may be
effected but not ability to access).

Jeremy
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 - Preview 17

[Kenneth Davis]

On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 6:10 PM, Rugxulo  wrote:
> Hi again,
...
> I notice that there is seemingly one bug / regression, otherwise all
> my "tests" (MetaDOS) seem to work fine. (I assume Jeremy will notice
> this and that I don't have to file a separate bug report or email him
> privately. If not, I'll try to remember later.)
>
> In an attempt to not load the RAM driver over and over again, I had a
> naive "if exist %RAMDRIVE%:\nul goto end" inside the actual
> RAMDRIVE.BAT file (which is called by autoexec).
>
...

Try http://www.fdos.org/kernel/testing/truename/KERNEL.SYS
I have to revisit commit r1724 which was to fix an issue opening
character devices with bad paths as it is the cause of this issue.
Thank you for the testing and report with details for me to duplicate.

Jeremy

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Re: [Freedos-user] Re : Support for 4k byte sectors + TDSK

[Kenneth Davis]

On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 3:13 PM, Bertho Grandpied y31415926...@yahoo.fr wrote:

 Hi, Guys! Replying to self, sort of, and Jeremy at the same time.
 I've been glancing thru the ram disk, TDSK, source. Internal buffer (used for 
 init only) was provisionned for one 4K sector, but for some reason author(s) 
 limited sector size to 2K, as specified on the driver's command line.

 I boldly hacked the binary so it ignored the limitation and, behold, a first 
 quick and (very) dirty test of a ~8 MBytes FAT12 based RAM disk *with 4096 
 byte sectors* in MS-DOS 7.1 with a rather fully loaded config SUCCEEDED! I 
 was able to copy several megabyte files to/from the ramdisk (quick tests did 
 include binary compare fo source to dest, and an examination of the RAMdisk 
 with Norton's DISKEDIT revealed no problems).


 I'm not affirming yet there are no hidden bugs but, clearly, MSDOS CAN 
 support this type of device with no or little problems ! This to me is great 
 news, since it makes it worth developing a simple ASPI to DOS convertor for 
 use with my external USB disk. MSDOS bugs, if any, may be limited to 
 installing large sectored units which are to be managed by IO/MSDOS.SYS 
 internal disk driver.

 Jeremy wrote :
 (currently not while testing). ?I have tested 256, 512,
 1024, and 2048
 byte sectors with tdsk (currently my only way to test).


 You may try to force TDSK to allow 4096 bps (not more without recompilation) 
 by nullifying the sanity test for command-line size-of-sector, like I did !


 Czerno


For testing only - warning may corrupt data!!!
https://www.fdos.org/kernel/testing/4K/
Included is a test kernel supporting 4KB sectors, note it limits
buffers to 2 to avoid memory corruption on boot.  Also there is tdsk
3.2 with patch to allow 4KB sectors assembled with jwasm.
source can be found on sf fdos svn - hack to limit buffers to 2 not
there but available on request.  this kernel is there to allow testing
with drive that exposes non 512 byte sectors only and will be removed
without notice.

Thanks for testing,
Jeremy

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