China DOS Union

1. pccache does not need to be loaded with LH; its own /MINI parameter can already load it into UMB. If loaded with LH, on my machine it hangs when EMM386 is resident.
2. As for the NTFSDOS on the disk, on my machine, with EMM386 resident, when using the dir command to view the second NTFS partition, the screen scrolls endlessly. If I switch to version 4.03, this does not happen.
3. I successfully used Motto Hairu to drive a USBEST MP Utility Century Classic USB flash drive, but it conflicts with ntfsdos. Whether it is the read-only version on the boot disk or version 4.03, it hangs as soon as it runs.
4. The files required by grub are on the disk, but the grub program itself is nowhere to be seen. I don't know why.
5. cloaking and the programs that support it were removed from the disk. I don't know what the reason was.
6. After testing, on my 845G/GL machine, UMBPCI.SYS with the /I=D400-EFFF parameter gives more UMB than using no parameter, or using /F, /M, or /I=other values. HIRAM.EXE must use the /X=CC00-D0FF parameter, otherwise it hangs. But on my 845PE machine, UMBPCI.SYS does not need any parameters, while HIRAM.EXE must use /X=D000-D4FF, otherwise it hangs. This is different from the parameters in my previous post. I don't know why either; maybe the version of UMBPCI.SYS is different. Please also post your parameter configurations in this area so we can exchange information together.

Everything stated above refers to the 10.12 boot disk.

1: About PC-CACHE, that's right, it really can go into UMB without being loaded with the LH command. Since on my computer there was no difference between using LH and not using it, I never bothered with it. Since you brought up this issue, I'll remove the LH command in the next update.

2: About that NTFSDOS issue, do you mean the 3.02 read-only version has a BUG? I wonder whether the above-mentioned 4.03 version is the read-only one or the read-write one?

3: As for conflicts among programs like DUSE, USBASPI, and NTFSDOS, there really isn't any good way to solve them. The only option is to let users choose whether to load them.

4: The GRUB program is the stage1 and stage2 files in boot, but they have already been given the S, H, and R attributes.

5: There are three reasons for removing CLOAKING:
a): to improve compatibility. CLOAKING causes hangs on some systems (for example in VPC), and although it does not hang in VMWare, it still cannot work properly there;
b): to save disk space in order to add GRUB multi-boot support. It was precisely by deleting files such as CLOAKING.EXE that there was enough disk space to add files such as stage2;
c): with the release of SHSUCDX 2.1a at that time, not only was the memory usage of the CD-ROM driver greatly reduced (one CD-ROM uses only 6.5KB of memory), making it not far off from CLOAKING+MSCDEX, but the BUG about multiple CD-ROM drives in the earlier 1.4/2.0/2.1 versions had also been fixed, so it could officially be used in this boot disk to replace CLOAKING+MSCDEX.

6: In the next version, I plan to remove the HIRAM.EXE file to further improve compatibility. But as for UMBPCI.SYS, no parameters can be added to it in the super boot disk, because although on some systems it may get more UMB memory, it would reduce its compatibility on other systems.

1. NTFSDOS 3.02 read-only works normally on my machine when viewing the first NTFS partition; it only behaves abnormally when viewing the second NTFS partition (there are many files in the root directory of that partition). The 4.03 version I switched to is the read-write one.
2. Since there are conflicts among programs such as DUSE, USBASPI, and NTFSDOS, and users can only choose whether to load them, but in the current boot disk the related options are all loaded, I hope this can be improved in the next version.
3. My machine has no floppy drive, so I boot from a USB flash drive. The boot disk was made by formatting the USB flash drive as USB-HDD, then using WinImage to directly extract the files from your boot disk image file onto the USB flash drive, moving all files except IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, COMMAND.COM, CONFIG.SYS, and AUTOEXEC.BAT into one directory, and then making appropriate modifications. But at boot time I did not see the boot mode selection described in the instructions (that is, I did not see GRUB taking effect). I wonder what I should do to make the boot mode selection appear?
4. On my 845G/GL machine, using HIRAM.EXE makes the D100-D3FF address range additionally available. I wonder whether my parameter settings would apply equally on other machines using the same chipset. If they do, I suggest not removing HIRAM.EXE, but instead collecting settings for different chipsets and then making a secondary menu for users to choose from.
5. Aside from virtual machines, does CLOAKING also have compatibility issues on some other systems? If not, it would still be better to keep it, since it still has practical value. After all, the vast majority of people making boot disks are not doing it just to play around in virtual machines.
6. Can you find any software that can use the memory in the monochrome display area as UMB in real mode? I have a lot of resident software, and I really need that block of memory.

CLOAKING certainly does not only have compatibility issues in virtual machines; it also seems to have problems on some other systems. After all, SHSUCDX 2.1a already uses very little memory, and its size is much smaller too, so it is more practical.

If you want GNU GRUB to work, then you absolutely must not "directly extract the files and copy them to the USB flash drive and then make appropriate modifications"!! If you don't have a floppy drive, I still recommend using a virtual floppy drive or CD boot to do it.

Since NTFSDOS 4.03 is the read-write version, it cannot be included (it is too large). I wonder whether there is any read-only NTFSDOS that supports the second NTFS drive?

Looks like I'll have to install GNU GRUB onto my USB flash drive myself. Where can I download GNU GRUB? How do I install and configure it?

If you want to install it onto a USB flash drive manually, I recommend downloading a full version of GRUB for DOS 0.1.4, then following the prompts to install it. GRUB for DOS can be downloaded here:

http://newdos.yginfo.net/grubdos.htm