Has anyone managed to get OS/2 to fully boot via Syslinux's memdisk?
I have played around with it a bit both as a floppy image and a hard
disk image, but either it hangs when loading IBMINT13.I13 driver or
doesn't load any .ADD driver and stops saying it cannot find COUNTRY.SYS
(it needs at
least one .ADD disk driver loaded before it can continue accessing the
boot device).
Going in details as far as I can see, it loads successfully the boot
sector, OS2LDR, OS2KRNL, OS2LOGO, CONFIG.SYS
but stops there after attempting to find the correct .ADD driver to load
in CONFIG.SYS.
I believe that the IBMINT13.I13 driver is the only way to go when it
comes to using INT13h disk access (that is what memdisk does - redirect
interrupt 13 calls to the ram disk it creates in memory) but if we
cannot get the sources for this driver, then creating an alternate
driver is the only way to go.
Is there an alternate Interrupt 13 driver for OS/2?
I have also looked into something that is also called memdisk by Veit
Kannegieser.
His homepage is here: http://www-user.tu-cottbus.de/~kannegv/index_e.htm
You can get the program from here:
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-viewer?sh=1&fname=/pub/os2/util/startup/memdisk.zip
And even the sources for the program here:
http://www-user.tu-cottbus.de/~kannegv/quelle/memdisk.arj
It was a bit difficult to get Veit's memdisk up and running but I did
somewhat manage to get a mini-OS/2 up and running in RAM. The
dissadvantage with this program is that you cannot create directories
during the creation of the ram disk and it is also limited to the amount
of space of a floppy disk.
Is it possible to study the sources of Veit's memdisk program to create
an alternate interrupt 13 driver for OS/2?
I would love to help although I am not a programming expert.
IBM OS/2's Device Driver kit is freely available here:
ftp://ddkdnld:its5now at service.boulder.ibm.com/
Quinn