China DOS Union

Bu dian xiong, I have no intention of blaming anyone at all, just feel quite helpless. The tone used is a bit disrespectful, so I apologize here! It's not that I don't insist, but that I have made several attempts without success, and I can't always pester you about this issue. Esme brought up the old topic again, so I sent that passage of words that might make you unhappy. What do you mean by "I directly replaced the 1.44M boot image on the installation disc of the genuine Win98 with it"? Does it mean directly replacing the boot file in win98.iso with it or something else? I don't understand. Well, how about you directly make my grldr.img into grldr.iso and upload it. I'll carefully study where the problem is. Also, please don't mind my momentary rash words. Thank you!

The following is a quote from Esme's post on 2005-3-23 11:41:07:
blue777, if you only study floppy disk booting, Ieldr may not seem useful to you? If the CD image iso file can be small enough to fit on a floppy disk, then it has no function, then it is better to boot with a floppy disk img, and booting the real-mode CD grub can be competent. If you want Ieldr to call the iso in the hard disk, this function is not universal, because the files on everyone's hard disk are different

Why don't you understand my meaning?
I need to make a grub-booted floppy disk startup disk, and add the following item in menu.lst:
title Boot from iso file (hd0,0)/iso_file.iso
chainloader (fd0)/ieldr
And my floppy disk provides Ieldr. Suppose I need to reinstall the system, and need to use d:\folder\xp.iso. Although I can use:
shsucdhd /f:d:\folder\xp.iso
shsucdx /d:shsu-cdh
to load the iso image under dos for installation, but I can't restart. (Although I can copy the i386\ to the hard disk for installation)
Now I just need to go to dos first, rename xp.iso to iso_file.iso and copy it to c:\.
Then use echo isomeu iso_file.iso>isoemu.ini to create a new isoemu.ini, and also copy it to c:\.
In this way, after restarting, come to the menu.lst interface again and select that item, isn't it directly booting from c:\iso_file.iso?
Each question I raise has a purpose, not being self-deprecating.

Don't get me wrong, everyone is just discussing here. I never think your questions are self-deprecating. On the contrary, I admire your single-minded dedication to the boot disk. I was just about to study your Pandora's box, but the network disk you chose is really... It doesn't support breakpoint continuation, it's super slow, and it always breaks. I've been downloading it with net transport for two days online and haven't got it down yet. Does it have something to do with me being abroad? I'll think of other ways for the ISO boot you mentioned, and also for other difficulties you encounter. Don't worry, let's figure it out together, there will always be a way.

Regarding the boot disk making, I also have some suggestions. The reason I am so persistent on ntfs4dos pro is precisely because it can perform full operations on NTFS. Although it is a bit larger in size, it can still be fit on two disks. And the current boot disk comes with ntfs4dos that can only read, but you think about it, if XP has an issue, such as ntoskrnl.exe being mistakenly deleted or infected with a virus, such a disk can't rescue it. But with ntfs4dos pro, you can manually restore the backup. ERD Commander also has many unsatisfactory places, so I have always liked using ntfs4dos pro. If MS-DOS could be embedded with the identification of NTFS, that would be great.

hnlyzhd:

"Got it", what exactly is "got it"? Is it that chainloader (hd....)/ieldr was successful? Or something else? Thank you for the detailed description. According to your description, it seems that the method of chainloader (hd....)/ieldr should be almost successful, and no additional command-line parameters need to be added.

Esme:

Thank you for the detailed report. I have reviewed the source code in asm.S in these versions again. I found that the earliest and most crude pre version was a lucky hit. This crude version actually suits the appetite of your ntfs4dos pro, which is really a mixed feeling.

When I first wrote this pre-release version, I used the int15 instruction when reading the virtual sector data in the extended memory. Later versions were improved, sometimes using the int15 instruction, and sometimes using pushf; call far to directly call the original int15 entry address in the BIOS. That is, in real mode, we need to call the original BIOS program, and in protected mode, since the BIOS is no longer valid, we should call the int15 instruction at this time.

Your ntfs4dos pro does not comply with the int15/EAX=e820h specification. It arbitrarily moves the system memory space that is reserved and not allowed to be used casually by int15/EAX=e820h. If we modify the program to adapt to ntfs4dos pro, then a large number of other programs may fail. So, let's just abandon it. Does anyone have any opinions? Maybe someone will say, add another map command-line parameter to control this behavior, so that it can meet the requirements of ntfs4dospro. However, the problem is that our parameter space is exhausted. For such a non-compliant program, it is not suitable for us to make major adjustments. Our program can cooperate well with Microsoft's DOS boot floppy disk and even win98. There is really no need to take care of other third-party non-compliant programs. You can find a substitute to use, or wait for the software to be upgraded, correct the non-compliant problems, and then use it.

blue777：

Everyone is here for technology, so there's no need to say sorry or anything like that. If it's not for technology, who would come here for what? For those who are here for technology, they generally don't care if what someone says is too hard to accept, and besides, you're not wrong at all. Actually, I'm even afraid of saying something wrong that makes you uncomfortable. I speak directly and it's easy to be misunderstood, but I'm just sharing my thoughts. If you don't express your thoughts, it would be too uncomfortable. I never blame others, so don't take my words as blame.

ftp://ftp.linuxeden.com/tinybit/win98_head.iso

Note that this is not a complete ISO file; it's just the first 84 sectors of a Win98 installation CD. Immediately following it is the image of a 1.44M bootable floppy disk. So, assuming your 1.44M bootable floppy disk image is grldr.img, you can generate your bootable CD like this. Note that this has no practical use, just to test if the CD can boot normally:

copy /b win98_head.iso + grldr.img grldr.iso

The COPY command with the /B parameter in DOS, I believe everyone knows how to use it? It's used to concatenate two files. The generated file is grldr.iso. This can boot your GRUB.

Here is the speech of Esme quoted on 2005-3-23 13:20:33:

Regarding the boot disk making, I also have some suggestions. The reason why I am so persistent on ntfs4dos pro is that it can fully operate on NTFS. Although it is a bit larger in size, it can be installed on two disks. And the current boot disk with ntfs4dos is only the read-only type. But think about it, if XP has a problem, such as ntoskrnl.exe being mistakenly deleted or infected by a virus, such a disk cannot save it. But with ntfs4dos pro, you can manually restore the backup. ERD Commander also has many unsatisfactory places, so I have always liked to use ntfs4dos pro. If only MS-DOS could be embedded with the identification of NTFS

Who said that the ntfs4dos in my boot disk is only readable and not writable? It can not only fully read and write NTFS partitions under DOS, but also fully read and write NTFS partitions in the DOS window of Win9x/ME. The size is only 91KB, and the memory usage is 118KB. Do you take it as the read-only version of ntfsdos pro, ntfsdos?

TO 不点兄：I just mentioned the principle of IELDR above. I'm too slow recently and haven't tested the CHAINLOADER command yet. Everyone, if you are interested, please download the latest ISOEMU boot program from my network disk, the new version of IELDR and the DOS version of IELDR.EXE, and test whether it can start...

Brother Budian, thank you for your reply. The reason I raised that question is because I want to make a comprehensive 1.44M boot image file. It can be used in various situations. Of course, it also includes being used as the boot file for a bootable CD. But precisely this can't be realized, so I'm delving deeply into it. Do you mean that when I make a CD demo.iso and finally want to load the bootable file to make it a bootable CD, I won't use the following method: copy /b demo.iso + grldr.img grldr.iso? Do you have a solution? Because stage.img can be made into a bootable CD no matter what, why is it that only grldr.img doesn't work? I think I can't just keep blaming the fault of the tool for making the ISO, but also need to look for reasons in grldr.img. Since grldr is made by you, I have to ask you for advice.

hnlyzhd, I know you are the moderator of the Wuyou CD Boot Forum. I tried the new version you provided. I don't know what the actual significance of ieldr.exe used in the DOS command line is? Since you have already booted to the DOS command line, can ieldr.exe still make the computer boot from the ISO file again? If I have misunderstood, please criticize and correct me!

Haha! There are still exciting news! I successfully used the chainloader (fd0)/ieldr mentioned by Brother Budian to boot the ieldr in the floppy disk. Thanks to tinybit! Thanks to Gandalf! Now I can use a floppy disk to boot the bootable ISO file from the hard disk! (The method is in building 92 above) Now the 1.44M bootable image I made has another important addition! To be honest, I had no interest in Gandalf's localized grub0.95 at all! Because it's too big on the floppy disk! Including the compiled-in scdrom is far less useful than using cd.bs + bcdl (which can make the computer boot from the USB drive), so I have no gratitude or respect for Gandalf, but his ieldr is still very useful! It can be said to be a revolutionary innovation! Here, please allow me to express the highest respect to Brother Budian and Gandalf again!!!

Dear Brother BLUE777: Just as you thought, running IELDR.EXE under DOS can automatically find the ISOEMU.INI information on the hard disk, and then start the ISO file on the hard disk, just like running GRUB.EXE under DOS to start GRUB. However, running IELDR.EXE under DOS requires that it must be pure DOS.

You mean the pure DOS with only one kernel io.sys and command interpreter command.com as the most simplified DOS? (MS-DOS 7.10 doesn't need msdos.sys)
And this also restricts me from being able to adopt more options such as pc-dos, rom-dos, dr-dos, etc. (grub and ieldr can't be used under those DOS)
So it's better to call ieldr in menu.lst, otherwise I have to write an extra puer real mode in config.sys.

You misunderstood. What we call "image" should be fully stated as "bootable image". You can use grub's memdrive to virtualize a floppy drive in memory to run it. And a bootable image has an MBR. It's not that the entire hard disk image is not possible! It's just that in the pre4 version newly compiled by tinybit on March 9, 2005, it is no longer necessary to require the entire hard disk image, but only the single partition image where the system is located.