Like a lot of people, I am using SYSLINUX + MEMDISK to make a technician universal boot disk on a USB key (I have done the same with ISOLINUX and MEMDISK for a CD using Bart's method for bootable CDs) I *LOVE* Syslinux and MEMDISK, and what I can do with floppy images! I have a few problems that have cropped up, most notably the DOCMEMORY program (www.simmstester.com) boots fing, but the system hangs when I start the memory test (I suspect that since it is encapsulated in an emulation, it blithlely overwrites important stuff). I suspect this is likely a problem with DocMemory, but I don't know how to troubleshoot it. It runs off a FreeDOS bootable disk, and is a free download. I don't know how docmemory figures out where it shouldn't write, or what mechanisms exist to communicate that information, but hopefull people on this mailing list will 8-) As other points of interest: Windows 98 Gold and Windows ME boot disks fail, but Windows 98 SE boot disk images work (go figure). I've also managed to get Driveimager and Partition Magic to work by rolling the two doot disks into a single 2.88mb image using Winimage (though memdisk doesn't like the 1.5M floppy images that Winimage writes, it considers them a hard drive image. As an aside, and this is probably a FAQ... it looks like SYSLINUX won't boot out of subdirectories. True? When I make a kernel name like foo/wigdet.img, it can't find image foowidge.tim. I imaging it hangs hard to the 8.3 limits for maximum compatability 8-) I'm still playing with this powerful tool. Very nice.
Phillip Remaker wrote:> Like a lot of people, I am using SYSLINUX + MEMDISK to make a technician > universal boot disk on a USB key (I have done the same with ISOLINUX and > MEMDISK for a CD using Bart's method for bootable CDs) > > I *LOVE* Syslinux and MEMDISK, and what I can do with floppy images! > > I have a few problems that have cropped up, most notably the DOCMEMORY > program (www.simmstester.com) boots fing, but the system hangs when I start > the memory test (I suspect that since it is encapsulated in an emulation, it > blithlely overwrites important stuff). I suspect this is likely a problem > with DocMemory, but I don't know how to troubleshoot it. It runs off a > FreeDOS bootable disk, and is a free download. > > I don't know how docmemory figures out where it shouldn't write, or what > mechanisms exist to communicate that information, but hopefull people on > this mailing list will 8-) >What it *SHOULD* use is INT 15h, AX=E820h.> As an aside, and this is probably a FAQ... it looks like SYSLINUX won't boot > out of subdirectories. True? When I make a kernel name like > foo/wigdet.img, it can't find image foowidge.tim. I imaging it hangs hard > to the 8.3 limits for maximum compatability 8-)Correct. -hpa
rbitter at cntnl.jnj.com
2004-Jan-13 10:34 UTC
[syslinux] DOCMEMORY 2.0 (simmtester) and MEMDISK
hi Phillip, "memdisk doesn't like the 1.5M floppy images that Winimage writes, it considers them a hard drive image." In the documentation you will find that if you add 'floppy' to your memdisk command it should force memdisk to treat the winimage as a floppy image. Does not always work for me though.. Regards, Rijk
Hi, "Phillip Remaker" <remaker at suespammers.org> schrieb am 13.01.04 00:23:34:> I have a few problems that have cropped up, most notably the DOCMEMORY > program (www.simmstester.com) boots fing, but the system hangs when I start > the memory test (I suspect that since it is encapsulated in an emulation, it > blithlely overwrites important stuff). I suspect this is likely a problem > with DocMemory, but I don't know how to troubleshoot it. It runs off a > FreeDOS bootable disk, and is a free download.If all you need is a memory tester you could also try memtest86: http://www.memtest86.com/ This works as a replacement of a linux kernel so memdisk isn't involved. Works well with sys/pxelinux.> I've also managed to get Driveimager and Partition Magic to work by rolling > the two doot disks into a single 2.88mb image using Winimage (though memdisk > doesn't like the 1.5M floppy images that Winimage writes, it considers them > a hard drive image.You can force memdisk to treat this as a floppy image, with the 'floppy' parameter. Everything different from standard floppy sizes (1.44; 2.88 MB etc.) is considered a hard disk. Regards, Josef ______________________________________________________________________________ Nachrichten, Musik und Spiele schnell und einfach per Quickstart im WEB.DE Screensaver - Gratis downloaden: http://screensaver.web.de/?mc=021110
rbitter at cntnl.jnj.com
2004-Jan-14 11:35 UTC
[syslinux] DOCMEMORY 2.0 (simmtester) and MEMDISK
Hi Phillip,
is this snip from my config file what you are looking for ?
label 0
LOCALBOOT 0
label 1
KERNEL memdisk/memdisk
APPEND initrd=images/dos500/dos500.ima
label 2
KERNEL memdisk/memdisk
APPEND initrd=images/dos600/dos600.ima
label 3
KERNEL memdisk/memdisk
APPEND initrd=images/dos620/dos62_uk.ima
Regards,
Rijk
-----Original Message-----
From: Phillip Remaker [mailto:remaker at suespammers.org]
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 7:38 PM
To: Josef Siemes; syslinux at zytor.com
Subject: Re: [syslinux] DOCMEMORY 2.0 (simmtester) and MEMDISK
> If all you need is a memory tester you could also try memtest86:
> http://www.memtest86.com/
> This works as a replacement of a linux kernel so memdisk isn't
involved.
Works> well with sys/pxelinux.
This is excellent, I was not aware of this program. Very nice.
> You can force memdisk to treat [1.5M image] as a floppy image, with the
'floppy' parameter.> Everything different from standard floppy sizes (1.44; 2.88 MB etc.) is
considered> a hard disk.
Ah, great. more information that I did not know. These tools rock. Also,
Peter was kind enough to point out the memory map function that some DOS
applications (like the Disk Drive Diagnostic Disks) are seemingly failing to
use (INT 15h, AX=E820h), so I can go hassle the vendors. As if they care.
The next thing for an ultimate boot disk: Is it possible to mix booting of
floppy and ISO images? Of will I need to do surgery on the iso to extract
the bootable hunk from the ISO to point to syslinux? I'm still trying to
educate myself on all of the subleties of the boot process. Looks like
everything keeps falling back to emulating the lowers common denominator
boot block, and chaining.
Another feature request, which may not be possible: I'd love the bootloader
to pick images out of an IMG subdirectory (I'm a big fan of "folders
only"
in the root). Between the size constraing and the broad number of
possible disk formats, this may not be possible. But it would be cool, and
appeal to my pathological inner neatnik.
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guess it will become a FAQ or a basic PXElinux setup/howto.. getting Syslinux + Memtest working actually there is the FAQ already..saying .BIN is reserved and you need to give memtest thus another name. rename memtest.bin to memtest (no .bin or other extension) then have your configuration file (*.cfg): label mt86 kernel memtest Memtest+ also runs fine for me from Syslinux. you can even get a DOS executable version (UPX-compressed) from: http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~eric/stuff/soft/specials/memteste.zip (a loader program was developed in order to combine DOS with Memtest and thus not needing 2 diskettes, as the 88KB memtest takes an entire diskette for itself because of the formatting) Bernd