Further adventures with CD-ROM versions of tomsrtbt. I've been using
Steve Brown's tomsrtbt ISO image
(http://userpages.umbc.edu/~sbrown7/), and the floppy image in Steve's
ISO image. It has one minor problem: some computers, like my laptop,
will boot to CD-ROM, but won't read a 2.88 MB image. They require a
1.44 MB image.

Well. About a year ago, Warren Doney got tomsrtbt to boot from
Mess-DOS, and I turned it into a
script. http://not.toms.net/tomsrtbt/200209/msg00006.html. Why not put
that onto a CD-ROM that boots from DOS?

So I built a customized Windows 98 boot floppy, and used that as the
boot image for my own Windows 98 installation CD-ROM. It has all of
Windows 98 on it, and it does two other things. It has tomsrtbt on it
complete with loadlin and batch file. It also has the kernel, initrd
and associated batch file so that I can boot my laptop from it.

I did make one change for the CD-ROM version. The batch file does not
change DOS drives for you, as I have no idea which drive your CD-ROM
is mounted on.

Of course, this is strictly for running on my laptop, where I have
Windows 98, so this is legal. For those who want to use their CDs
anywhere, there is an alternative to Mess-DOS/Windows 98,
FreeDOS. http://www.freedos.org/. It comes with on three 1.44 MB
floppy disk images or a 10 MB ISO image.

The boot floppy has a complete system and the basic scripts to install
freeDOS on a hard drive. Unfortunately, the installation is broken and
the instructions atrocious. But it will launch tomsrtbt.

It should be a good candidate for a two-stage tomsrtbt CD-ROM for
folks who need to be able to boot machines that only take 1.44 MB
floppy images. I haven't actually tried it, but if it will boot
tomsrtbt from hard drive, it should do it from CD-ROM.

-- 

Charles Curley                  /"\    ASCII Ribbon Campaign
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