Bernd Blaauw wrote:
Kenneth J. Davis schreef:
It is documented, within kernel source doc directory and at
http://freedos.sourceforge.net/kernel/docs/sys.htm
Strange that it says WinME is unsupported, and doesn't mention if Win9x
FAT16/32 bootsector works or is (still) broken.
somewhere 'segent' --> 'segment'
WinME is special since MS partially crippled it. I'm not sure if it
works asis or only if you use the emergency boot disk version; from sys'
standpoint it is treated as Win9x (has same boot requirements), but
there is no intention to add any special code for it.
But yes the Fat16 bootsector is still broken (I think I need to drop
about 9 more bytes from my current shared Fat12/Fat16 all DOS bootsector
[patched by sys with specific instructions to fit the selected DOS].
Technically Fat12 is broke to, but because the FAT is small enough it
still works.
looks like I confused SAVEBS with BACKUPBS, my apologies.
:-) I added them and I still have to look them up
I need to verify that the description for /RESTORBS is correct (does not
modify it only writes it to disk. Which if that is the case then I need
to add another option, perhaps /UPDATEBS which will take a bootsector
supplied by the user same as /RESTORBS, but will update the geometry
information in the BPB. [/RESTORBS may do that, in which case it will
need changing to reflect the documentation and new switch added].
To summarize for all those wondering about these switches,
/BACKUPBS indicates that when sys works as usual, it will save the
existing boot sector prior to any modifications that would occur
/DUMPBS does the same action as /BACKUPBS, but exits without doing the
normal sys actions (ie just save current boot sector to a file)
/RESTORBS reverses any actions sys did to the bootsector by restoring
the bootsector saved by either /BACKUPBS or /DUMPBS
to be added /UPDATEBS would take the bootsector as saved by /DUMPBS or
possibly /BACKUPBS and adjust its geometry information to match to drive
applied to; so in theory you could apply vendor X's boot sector
originally saved from disk A to disk B and it would boot [where disk A
and disk B are do not have identical geometry].
Regarding the MS install issue, one could do something like format with
FreeDOS format, then use FreeDOS sys to install MS-DOS files/bootsector
via its /UPDATEBS (and obtained by its /DUMPBS, winimage, any other
bootsector extracting program, or even from a disk image), etc.
/OEM:XX where XX determines which DOS you want to boot; it
chooses/alters the bootsector to be compatible with the given DOS.
For FreeDOS all that is really required is passing boot drive in BX
and loading full kernel (Enhanced DR-DOS is similar, except uses DX),
and MS/PC DOS have a heap of expectations (less so in newer
releases). The AUTO option (which is the default) determines based on
which files are present (with a hard coded list, the order of which
determines the one selected should multiple kernels be present);
however due to the similarities, EDR-DOS will be used instead of
PC-DOS so PC-DOS must always be manually selected.
/OEM:AUTO usually will mean FreeDOS is preferred, yes.
When you want to force writing a FreeDOS bootsector , use /OEM:FD
/OEM:MS and OEM:W9x are difficult to use, as you cannot determine in
batchfile or commandline when looking at the system files which
operating system is used.
Only thing you can determine it's Windows instead of MSDOS is if you see
IO.SYS on a fat32 partition.
does this imply you think an /OEM:?? that indicates generically MS DOS
(version 6 or earlier and win9x DOS version 7+)? What two letters
abbreviation would you suggest? I'd prefer not removing W9x and merging
them both into MS; but will if the consensus is this is preferred (since
the filenames are the same it is unlikely for both to be on the same
disk; but if they were using alternate names how would a user select the
correct one?)
Bernd
Jeremy
-------------------------------------------------------
SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO
September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices
Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA
Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
