China DOS Union

Question: does this 7zip mean compressing grub.exe or compressing stage2?
If it's compressing stage2, then which compression format should be chosen? I tried it and the compressed stage2 files all could not be installed to hd0 through grub.exe

< Avldr beta 1> pre-May Day edition:

Please visit: http://bbs.wuyou.com/cgi-bin/topic.cgi?forum=34&topic=8597&show=0
Download: http://sysoft.zdwx.com/aviator/

Expert, can you separate out the Alt-key function of grub4rom by itself?
I took a look and the bios rom only has 48K of space.
At present my system has only one hard disk, no floppy drive, and an optical drive. There is only one fat32 partition, the rest are NTFS partitions. Although I have already reserved a fat32 partition. But with something like cntloader+system partition)+dfat32 hda5),
if I want to install the system through a virtual floppy from c:, there's simply no way. winnt.exe does not recognize (hard disk:partition), so I have to go through the optical drive, delete the c: ntfs partition, format it again as fat32, then convert it back to ntfs. So once c: is deleted, there is simply no way to load the optical drive.
If the Alt-key function could use something like confile (hdx,x)/boot/grub/menu.lst to load, then a virtual floppy really could replace a floppy disk.
There should be quite a few friends whose rom space is insufficient for the current grub boot loader. For windows users, the most troublesome thing is that it doesn't support booting windows on an arbitrary partition. You still have to go through ntloader.

DOS (6.22 or 7.1) remotely booted from netware cannot use grub.exe. Error: Programs such as TSRs and drvice drivers may also change the BIOS interrupt vector table.Make sure those programs are not runing,then try again. I once asked the author of grub for dos about it, and he said the rpl boot pollutes the BIOS interrupt vectors. Avldr has the same situation and cannot run under DOS remotely booted from novell either. I wonder whether this can be improved?

Those who have downloaded it, please go to http://sysoft.zdwx.com/aviator/ to get the updated Avldr Beta1 ++:

21:29 2005-4-29 - 1st++
* Adjusted the FAT32 code in diskmgr to better support FAT32 partitions;
* Adjusted the page again and fixed the error in the "install" function;
* Adjusted the MZ code and fixed the error where it could not run under Dos;

17:57 2005-4-29 - 1st+
* Adjusted the wording on the page;
* Changed the links to call IE for display instead of displaying by itself;
11:11 2005-4-28 - 1st Step

to dat Using 7Zip to compress Pre_Stage and then using grldr/grub.exe will not boot. You need to
decompress that compressed boot image at
some appropriate point. － Just like where Avldr.exe is,
you need to switch the CPU to protected mode, then switch back to real mode, and boot. And for that, you
can completely refer to the decompress part in versions after Linux Kernel 1.00. ；） －－ Linux has abundant resources! As for what you said about separating the Alt function, I didn't quite understand it. :-(to GONGXP: Regarding the problem you mentioned, I put forward some ideas in Budian's hottest thread. But you
know, this part of the functionality is Budian's original work, and he is maintaining it. The ieldr.exe
I provide also borrows the functionality of his Grub.exe. So, we look forward to Budian improving this function!------------------------

The following is quoted from dato's post on 2005-4-29 18:55:25:

Expert, can you separate out the Alt-key function of grub4rom by itself?
I took a look and the bios rom only has 48K of space.
At present my system has only one hard disk, no floppy drive, and an optical drive. There is only one fat32 partition, the rest are NTFS partitions. Although I have already reserved a fat32 partition. But with something like cntloader+system partition)+dfat32 hda5)
if I want to install the system through a virtual floppy from c:, there's simply no way. winnt.exe does not recognize (hard disk:partition), so I have to go through the optical drive, delete the c: ntfs partition, format it again as fat32, then convert it back to ntfs. So once c: is deleted, there is simply no way to load the optical drive.
If the Alt-key function could use something like confile (hdx,x)/boot/grub/menu.lst to load, then a virtual floppy really could replace a floppy disk.
There should be quite a few friends whose rom space is insufficient for the current grub boot loader. For windows users, the most troublesome thing is that it doesn't support booting windows on an arbitrary partition. You still have to go through ntloader

How about doing it this way: press the ALT key when the BIOS detection ends, and at that time it will automatically look for the GRLDR file on the hard disk to start GRUB. If there is no GRLDR file, it will boot from the hard disk. Would that kind of function achieve your purpose?

I'm using WINDOWS 2003. When loading with BOOT.INI it black-screens and hangs. When loading under DOS it reboots directly. When loading with BOOT.INI, pressing ALT can bring up the menu.

^_^, looks like there are problems. Thanks, Mr. Chenall. But I recommend everyone test it in a virtual machine for now. This is still a toy. Hehe.

I can start it successfully from the command line in a VPC virtual machine.
It can also be loaded successfully with BOOT.INI; it just can't start successfully in a real environment.

I looked at it again, and I estimate that using the Avldr.exe framework, it should be possible to consider adding Grub parameters in boot.ini. It would look something like this:

C:\Avldr.exe="Load Avldr preview edition" /(hd0,1)\boot\grub\menu.lst

I don't think there would be any big problem. Hehe.

Brother, can you describe the error situation in more detail? If so, I might be able to solve this problem by modifying the program.

The following is quoted from hnlyzhd's post on 2005-4-30 9:52:11:


How about doing it this way: press the ALT key when the BIOS detection ends, and at that time it will automatically look for the GRLDR file on the hard disk to start GRUB. If there is no GRLDR file, it will boot from the hard disk. Would that kind of function achieve your purpose?

Yes, that's exactly the kind of function.
Right now the main limitation is insufficient bios rom space, so a slimmed-down version is needed.
With a partition layout like cntloader+ntfs)+dfat32 hda5), and no CD or floppy boot, trying to install a fresh windows system through a virtual floppy environment is really awful. None of the installation methods I know can install it. Once c: is deleted and rebuilt, it has to reboot once. And after a reboot, there's no way to load the virtual floppy anymore.
Now moving grub from loading off the hard disk into the bios rom should solve that problem quite well.
Recently the hard disk partition table was wrong, and on boot it goes straight to grub>shell. I also don't know whether stage2 has already been loaded at that time (don't laugh, expert).
So with the confile command there should still be a way to load the boot disk placed on the hard disk. The Alt-key function seems to mean exactly that, so can a separate version be split out to solve the insufficient rom space problem?

The following is quoted from Gandalf's post on 2005-4-30 13:52:59:

Brother, can you describe the error situation in more detail? If so, I might be able to solve this problem by modifying the program.

I'm using a WINDOWS 2003 system
C: FAT32
D: NTFS
E: FAT32
When loading through BOOT.INI, it black-screens; I can only see a blinking cursor, and pressing keys gets no response at all.
When loading through BOOT.INI, if I press ALT immediately, the menu appears.
Under DOS, running AVLDR.EXE directly makes the computer reboot automatically.