Syslinux - Mar 2004 - SYSLINUX works on more than 'floppy' media

Hi folks,

I hit the syslinux homepage for the first time in a while.  The stuff
just works, so there's no reason to come to the website, eh? :)

Anyway, the first line is "The SYSLINUX Project covers lightweight
bootloaders for floppy media (SYSLINUX)", and I think that this needs to
be expanded a bit.  I use SYSLINUX on CompactFlash, and it works great
because together with loopback file systems, its possible to put an
entire linux system onto a stock FAT-formatted CompactFlash without
reformatting it and losing Windows-access capability.

So I'd just like to point out that SYSLINUX would be better described
now as a lightweight bootloader for removable media.

Just my $0.03.

Alex Pavloff - apavloff at esatechnology.com
ESA Technology ---- www.esatechnology.com
------- Linux-based industrial HMI ------
-------- www.esatechnology.com/5k -------

Syslinux installs on any fat12/fat16 device / partition / storage area.

I wonder why there exist both syslinux.exe and syslinux.com though..
if NT family -> use NT write methods from syslinux.exe
else use DOS write methods from syslinux.com

together with Memdisk with its Gzip support this allows for really nice bootable
disk images with a big free part.
(example: load a compressed 100MB harddisk image).

with an average 2:1 compression rate you would be able to store 2.6MB of data on
a 1.44MB diskette (syslinux -> memdisk -> gzip'd 2.88MB imagefile)

have fun using Syslinux. I do.

Alex Pavloff wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> I hit the syslinux homepage for the first time in a while.  The stuff
> just works, so there's no reason to come to the website, eh? :)
> 
> Anyway, the first line is "The SYSLINUX Project covers lightweight
> bootloaders for floppy media (SYSLINUX)", and I think that this needs
to
> be expanded a bit.  I use SYSLINUX on CompactFlash, and it works great
> because together with loopback file systems, its possible to put an
> entire linux system onto a stock FAT-formatted CompactFlash without
> reformatting it and losing Windows-access capability.
> 
> So I'd just like to point out that SYSLINUX would be better described
> now as a lightweight bootloader for removable media.
> 
True enough.  I mostly didn't want to pitch it as a harddrive-based boot 
loader; although it can do that, its feature set isn't what people expect.

	-hpa