China DOS Union

1. Putting all files in the root directory is too messy for people using a USB flash drive to boot (including me). I suggest that, except for the few files required for booting, all the rest be placed in some directory, and even subdivided further within that directory.
2. For all path settings, unless necessary, do not specify a drive letter, or use the detected boot drive letter as much as possible. Only then will it also work for people booting from a hard disk or booting from a USB flash drive as USB-HDD (like me).
3. Since Vide-cdd.sys can detect and drive all IDE CD-ROM drives, then don't specify device names when loading it. Instead, generate the /d: parameter sequence for mscdex in Autoexec.bat through detection and processing. This would work in situations with multiple IDE CD-ROM drives, and would be more universal and adaptable.
4. It seems there are no drivers for SCSI devices on the disk? I suggest making it detect SCSI devices in the batch file and automatically install the corresponding drivers (a boot disk from some foreign website has this feature; I forgot the URL. The very small CD-ROM driver program for CD booting posted on this forum also came from that site. That boot disk also seemed to have a program for detecting the boot drive letter. I believe with moderator's skill, you can definitely find it).
5. Since USB device drivers may not always load successfully, if they are driven through config.sys, then if the driver fails, it will affect the drivers loaded afterward. I suggest separating the USB device drivers out and making them into a batch file, to be loaded as needed.
6. The prompt for installing DOSLFN is too technical. I suggest changing it to things like "GB", "GBK", "BIG5", "English", "Don''t Support Long File Name", or "Simplified Chinese", "Traditional Chinese", etc.
7. The waiting time for starting VC is too short; by the time you finish reading the prompt, the time is already up. I suggest using a prompt box like the DOSLFN startup one, letting the user choose whether to use VC.
8. Since COMMENT can display prompt information, then don't use echo.sys. This can also save that bit of disk space.

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Good suggestions...
I found that when making a USB flash drive bootable, that's exactly the issue: you have to manually change the A: and so on inside it, which is troublesome.

As for the situation with multiple IDE CD-ROM drives, VIDE-CDD.SYS will load all of them at once, and the subsequent MSCDEX/SHSUCDX will also assign drive letters to all of them at once, just like when there is only one IDE CD-ROM drive.

As for drivers for SCSI devices, the boot disk does have them. For example, DI1000DD.SYS and USBCD.SYS are drivers for SCSI hard disks/CD-ROM drives. Since USBASPI.SYS converts USB devices into SCSI devices for use, USB devices can also be driven through it.

Question:
1. In the case of multiple IDE CD-ROM drives, if only one device name is specified in MSCDEX/SHSUCDX, will it assign drive letters to the remaining IDE CD-ROM drives?
2. If DI1000DD.SYS and USBCD.SYS are used to drive a SCSI CD-ROM drive, is there no need to load the corresponding SCSI controller driver?

Regarding the loading of multiple IDE CD-ROM drives with MSCDEX/SHSUCDX, indeed only one device name is needed to drive all IDE CD-ROM drives.

As for the COMMENT command, it is similar to the REM command, just a comment, and cannot actually be displayed on the screen. Also, ECHO.SYS is extremely, extremely small, just over 100 bytes, so it basically doesn't take up any space.

As for drivers for certain specific SCSI controllers, such as ASPI8DOS.SYS, because they themselves are too large and are used very rarely, I have never included them. But in the future it could probably be implemented by adding a custom configuration feature.

The following is quoted from jmcarl's post on 2003-10-5 12:09:48:
1. Putting all files in the root directory is too messy for people using a USB flash drive to boot (including me). I suggest that, except for the few files required for booting, all the rest be placed in some directory, and even subdivided further within that directory.
2. For all path settings, unless necessary, do not specify a drive letter, or use the detected boot drive letter as much as possible. Only then will it also work for people booting from a hard disk or booting from a USB flash drive as USB-HDD (like me). Loading.

I very much agree with these two points. Though I always modify it myself.

I just updated the boot disk a bit. Actually only one path setting was changed, namely SHELL=COMMAND.COM

The DOSLFN prompts and so on have also been modified.

There is another issue: sometimes you need to boot from the hard disk, but forget to unplug it, or you need to change the boot order. It would be best if, like a CD, you could choose to boot from the hard disk, with the default being to boot from the USB drive after 10 seconds. How about that?

The following is quoted from 诸葛亮's post on 2003-10-13 19:58:02:
There is another issue: sometimes you need to boot from the hard disk, but forget to unplug it, or you need to change the boot order. It would be best if, like a CD, you could choose to boot from the hard disk, with the default being to boot from the USB drive after 10 seconds. How about that?

Are you talking about the old version... Have you tried the latest version???

It seems some friend on this forum mentioned that under linux it is possible to read files with Chinese names in NTFS partitions normally. Wengier, could you make it into an image file and add it to the boot disk, so that it can be started with GRUB.EXE when needed?