Syslinux - Dec 2002 - pxelinux/memdisk booting MSDOS floppy image requires local floppy disk

I found that if I do not have a local floppy installed and enabled on my client,
I will get the error 'Non-system disk' when I try to boot DOS floppy
images.

NT or Syslinux floppy images boot fine.

If I enable the floppy in the BIOS, then it boots the DOS floppies just fine.

Is this normal?  Is there a workaround?

There are MS-DOS images, so perhaps this is an MS-DOS limitation.


-- 
Andre Dalle                   [andre at dalle.ca]

Andre Dalle wrote:
> I found that if I do not have a local floppy installed and enabled on my
client,
> I will get the error 'Non-system disk' when I try to boot DOS
floppy images.
> 
> NT or Syslinux floppy images boot fine.
> 
> If I enable the floppy in the BIOS, then it boots the DOS floppies just
fine.
> 
> Is this normal?  Is there a workaround?
> 
> There are MS-DOS images, so perhaps this is an MS-DOS limitation.
> 
Sort of.  MS-DOS relies heavily on groping around in BIOS internal data 
structures, and if there are no floppies at all it's possible the BIOS 
doesn't initialize them properly.  Now, MEMDISK tries to modify these, 
but it's probably can't actually initialize them from scratch.  Try the 
latest -pre version, though.

	-hpa

FreeDOS works just fine.  Seems to pause a moment during "InitDISK" 
but continues to boot.

I'll just rebuild my images using FreeDOS, since I've been told the
software I'm using has been tested with FDOS.

I feel better using free software anyways =)

-- 
Andre Dalle                   [andre at dalle dot ca]
Unix junkie.