Hi Andrew, > I have been trying to format a CF card to boot FreeDOS on an embedded > PC/104 system. I have tried a lot of different methods to get the card and > PC to work together, but have so far been unsuccessful. The closest I have > got was using UNetBootin, but when I boot the system, I have to make a > selection on how to boot every time. Since I am using an embedded system, > this is not a desirable situation, since the unit will be operated without > monitor or keyboard nearly 100% of the time.
I would suggest to partition your CF, using LBA-centric partition types, for example "FAT16 above 32 MB" (DOS 4) or simply FAT32. For making the disk bootable, you can use our SYS from DOS, or use my sys-freedos-linux Perl script from Linux. I guess you may be able to use it in Windows with some tweaking, too. What is nice about the script is that you can override geometry and the partition offset manually. A frequent cause of boot failure is a mismatch between BIOS CHS geometry and the CHS geometry which is stored in the boot sector. The BIOS disk numbers might also be an issue, so my script also allows to override those. A more general approach might be using GRUB4DOS which seems to be very flexible and versatile, or the classic SYSLINUX. > install FreeDOS on the card from my XP machine (via USB adapter) Note that you can also get mechanical (no chips involved) CF to IDE adapters, which can be useful for having more harddisk style access. Many new BIOSes also make CF and other media visible via int 13 as normal disks, although this is sometimes limited to "if you booted from them". Talking about the CHS versus LBA problem: Our SYS uses boot sectors which autodetect what to use for FAT16, but I think they auto-skip LBA if the drive number is 0 (A:). For FAT32, SYS autodetects a choice at the moment when you run SYS, but I hope future versions give you a way for manual override. Windows might block our SYS from the needed lowlevel access. There is some HP tool for making USB sticks and other media bootable with DOS. It includes explicit FreeDOS support but is a bit old. > the CD and installing it that way, but it does not recognize the CF card You could try the USB drivers of Georg Potthast or Bret Johnson as recently discussed on the list :-). In particular the latter supports int 13 access so our SYS should be happier with that. > that way. I have also tried copying various FreeDOS images onto the card Images are tricky - floppy images would at most work for unpartitioned cards and I wonder what your BIOS will say about a CF with ISO9660 filesystem... Best should be to keep a normal partitioning scheme with LBA FAT partitions. Of course you can use my Linux tool from any Linux Live CD so you do not have to install Linux to any harddisk first. It should be easy to find it by name (sys-freedos-linux). Eric PS: I also have a patched version of "makebootfat" somewhere, or try the original - this tool does partitioning, formatting, copying of files and writing of boot sectors all in one tool but I do not know whether it has a nice Windows version... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
