China DOS Union

Boot disk: can choose to boot from CD, floppy, or hard disk.
Built in with Wengier's MSDOS710.
Penguin LOGO.

Open attachment

Let me download and try it

I tried it. Using SysLinux to make the boot selection is quite novel, but if it could directly let you choose whether to boot from the hard disk, floppy, or CD, that would be better, instead of choosing twice. And it would also be best to use a menu for selection, rather than having to type a few letters.

Also, a question: the IMZ compressed file inside is in GZip format, right? But why can't I extract it with UNTGZ?

imz is compressed with GZIP, you can use GZIP -d to extract it.
There are several advantages to using syslinux
1. Floppy disk images can be compressed, so one disk can hold several images
2. With MEMDISK, after booting, the original disk can be taken out and another disk inserted
3. The LOGO screen is displayed as soon as boot starts

As for menu booting, for now it can be temporarily handled by changing it to number input (the number of keys pressed should be about the same).
As for putting the floppy/hard disk selection at the top level, that task goes to expert Wengier.

The following is quoted from Wengier's post on 2003-5-4 23:07:23:
I tried it. Using SysLinux to make the boot selection is quite novel, but if it could directly let you choose whether to boot from the hard disk, floppy, or CD, that would be better, instead of choosing twice. And it would also be best to use a menu for selection, rather than having to type a few letters.

Also, a question: the IMZ compressed file inside is in GZip format, right? But why can't I extract it with UNTGZ?

RAR 3.1 can extract it
I have 2 questions for bigcannon
1。With MEMDISK, after booting, the original disk can be taken out and another disk inserted
Does that mean that once booting is complete, the boot disk is no longer needed at all?
2。Syslinux says the kernel does not have to be a LINUX kernel; it can be a boot sector or a COMBOOT FILE
What format of file is this COMBOOT FILE, and where can I download its tools

1. Yes. Using MEMDISK loads the entire floppy disk image into memory, so once you see the reading progress bar finish, you can take out the floppy.
2. There is an introduction at http://syslinux.zytor.com. comboot is a subset of DOS .com executable files; any .COM file that conforms to the specifications set by the author of syslinux will do.

The following is quoted from nre's post on 2003-5-5 11:51:14:
RAR 3.1 can extract it
I have 2 questions for bigcannon
1. With MEMDISK, after booting, the original disk can be taken out and another disk inserted
Does that mean after booting is completed, the boot disk is no longer needed at all?
2. Syslinux says the kernel does not have to be a LINUX kernel, it can be a boot sector or a COMBOOT FILE
What format is this COMBOOT FILE, and where can I download tools for it

Is there any tool that can install syslinux onto a hard disk? That would have a lot of uses.

Yes
syslinux.com c:

Unfortunately it does not support FAT32.

++++ BOOTING FROM A FAT FILESYSTEM PARTITION ON A HARD DISK ++++

SYSLINUX can boot from a FAT12 or FAT16 filesystem partition on a hard
disk (FAT32, introduced in Windows 95 OSR-2, is not supported,
however.) The installation procedure is identical to the procedure
for installing it on a floppy, and should work under either DOS or
Linux. To boot from a partition, SYSLINUX needs to be launched from a
Master Boot Record or another boot loader, just like DOS itself would.

Under DOS, you can install a standard simple MBR on the primary hard
disk by running the command:

FDISK /MBR

Then use the FDISK command to mark the appropriate partition active.

A simple MBR, roughly on par with the one installed by DOS (but
unencumbered), is included in the SYSLINUX distribution

The following is quoted from nre's post on 2003-5-5 12:19:23:
Is there any tool that can install syslinux onto a hard disk? That would have a lot of uses.

Mm, learned quite a lot.

Not supporting FAT32 is pretty poor.

FAT16 support is enough. You can make a small FAT16 hard disk image, install SYSLINUX onto it, put several floppy disk images on it, and then you can achieve multiboot on a single-boot CD. That's one more option.

bigcannon: I have 3 questions for you
1。Do you have a tool to convert ordinary images into the LSS16 format mentioned in SYSLINUX?
2。SYSLINUX supports loading fonts. Do you know what the .psf file it mentions is, and where it can be found?
3。Is there a Windows version of GZIP? Or is there any tool under Windows that can compress to GZIP?

1. You can see in the makefile in SYSLINUX's SAMPLE directory how to convert from .PNG format to .LSS format,
syslogo.lss: syslogo.png $(PPMTOLSS16)
pngtopnm syslogo.png | \
$(PPMTOLSS16) \#000000=0 \#d0d0d0=7 \#f6f6f6=15 \
> syslogo.lss
Two programs are needed, pngtopnm and ../ppmtolss16. pngtopnm seems to come with UNIX, and it converts .PNG to .pnm/.ppm and other formats. You can also search online for pngtopnm.exe to find a DOS version of the program. ppmtolss16 is a PERL script that comes with syslinux; if you open it, you can see the source code and some comments.
2. Not sure. I don't think it would really support double-byte fonts anyway, but fortunately there is source code, so you can modify it yourself.
3. It's at http://www.gzip.org/.

The following is quoted from nre's post on 2003-5-7 14:19:41:
bigcannon:   I have 3 questions for you
1. Do you have a tool to convert ordinary images into the LSS16 format mentioned in SYSLINUX?
2. SYSLINUX supports loading fonts; do you know what kind of file the .psf file it mentions is, and where it can be found?
3. Is there a Windows version of GZIP? Or is there any tool under Windows that can compress into GZIP?

Thanks