Syslinux - Aug 2005 - Usin ISO Linux & Memdisk to create a Viritual Floppy drive that Linux & Windows can load driver disk from.

Hi,

It is becoming a bad habit for big OEM vendors to sell computers & servers
without floppy drives.
Unfortunatly both Windows and Linux (RedHat) need a floppy drive to load storage
drivers etc. during installation.

This is what I was thinking:
Use ISOLINUX and MEMDISK to load a floppy image of a driver disk into memory as
a viritual floppy drive "A:"/"/dev/fda" And then
"chainload" into Windows Installation and be able to F6 and load the
driver of the viritual floppy drive.

Would this be possilble?

I would like to create a CD with several driver disks, and possibly eaven some
diagnostic tools and recovery console etc. Anyone done something like this
before? Dockumented anywhere?


Best Regards
Harald Jens?s
MCP, CCNA
Nordic Server Support
Dell AB
http://support.euro.dell.com/
***************************
Please! Keep all history running!

Harald_Jensas at Dell.com wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> It is becoming a bad habit for big OEM vendors to sell computers &
servers without floppy drives.
> Unfortunatly both Windows and Linux (RedHat) need a floppy drive to load
storage drivers etc. during installation.
> 
> This is what I was thinking:
> Use ISOLINUX and MEMDISK to load a floppy image of a driver disk into
memory as a viritual floppy drive "A:"/"/dev/fda" And then
"chainload" into Windows Installation and be able to F6 and load the
driver of the viritual floppy drive.
> 
> Would this be possilble?
> 
> I would like to create a CD with several driver disks, and possibly eaven
some diagnostic tools and recovery console etc. Anyone done something like this
before? Dockumented anywhere?
> 
Someone would have to write a Windows driver for the virtual disk, and 
*I* won't do that.  It shouldn't be too hard, however, since it's
just a
chunk of memory which should be preserved from the OS.  The MEMDISK 
detection API will tell you where in memory it is located, so it can be 
treated as a MTD (memory technology disk) at that appropriate location.

As far as Linux is concerned, the easy way to do this is to use the 
existing MTD driver, and either add detection code or somehow configure 
it manually.

	-hpa

> I would like to create a CD with several driver disks, and possibly eaven
some diagnostic tools and recovery console etc. Anyone done something like this
before? Dockumented anywhere?
Have a look on the ultimate boot cd.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Or just use syslinux/memdisk.
That's just designed for.
Regards,

On 8/22/05, Harald_Jensas at dell.com <Harald_Jensas at dell.com>
wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> It is becoming a bad habit for big OEM vendors to sell computers &
servers without floppy drives.
> Unfortunatly both Windows and Linux (RedHat) need a floppy drive to load
storage drivers etc. during installation.
> 
> This is what I was thinking:
> Use ISOLINUX and MEMDISK to load a floppy image of a driver disk into
memory as a viritual floppy drive "A:"/"/dev/fda" And then
"chainload" into Windows Installation and be able to F6 and load the
driver of the viritual floppy drive.
> 
> Would this be possilble?
> 
> I would like to create a CD with several driver disks, and possibly eaven
some diagnostic tools and recovery console etc. Anyone done something like this
before? Dockumented anywhere?
> 
> 
> Best Regards
> Harald Jens?s
> MCP, CCNA
> Nordic Server Support
> Dell AB
> http://support.euro.dell.com/
> ***************************
> Please! Keep all history running!
Why don't you use one of the utilities designed fort this in windows,
such as VFD:  http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html  It's
free for anyone to use and everything.  I have also recently learned
that the commercial software WinImage now supports this as well, but,
VFD is more than sufficient for most needs with it's most recent
versions.

Hi,

I am able to load a floppy image into Memdisk and when this fail to boot
the system load MS-DOS from the HardDrive. I am able to read the
information on the Memdisk floppy image using "dir a:" in DOS.

Is there any way to get ISOLINUX to then halt ask to insert a CD and
then boot of the CD? 

Maby install SYSLINUX or an other bootloader on the floppy disk image
that can get the system to boot from CD?
Maby a COM32 image (32-bit COMBOOT) would be the easiest way to go?

Eaven get memdisk to just load the image into memory without trying boot
it, just dropping me back to the ISOLINUX prompt?


--
Harald

-----Original Message-----
From: H. Peter Anvin [mailto:hpa at zytor.com] 
Sent: den 22 augusti 2005 17:28
To: Jensas, Harald
Cc: SYSLINUX at zytor.com
Subject: Re: [syslinux] Usin ISO Linux & Memdisk to create a Viritual
Floppy drive that Linux & Windows can load driver disk from.

Harald_Jensas at Dell.com wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> It is becoming a bad habit for big OEM vendors to sell computers &
servers without floppy drives.
> Unfortunatly both Windows and Linux (RedHat) need a floppy drive to
load storage drivers etc. during installation.
> 
> This is what I was thinking:
> Use ISOLINUX and MEMDISK to load a floppy image of a driver disk into
memory as a viritual floppy drive "A:"/"/dev/fda" And then
"chainload"
into Windows Installation and be able to F6 and load the driver of the
viritual floppy drive.
> 
> Would this be possilble?
> 
> I would like to create a CD with several driver disks, and possibly
eaven some diagnostic tools and recovery console etc. Anyone done
something like this before? Dockumented anywhere?
> 
Someone would have to write a Windows driver for the virtual disk, and
*I* won't do that.  It shouldn't be too hard, however, since it's
just a
chunk of memory which should be preserved from the OS.  The MEMDISK
detection API will tell you where in memory it is located, so it can be
treated as a MTD (memory technology disk) at that appropriate location.

As far as Linux is concerned, the easy way to do this is to use the
existing MTD driver, and either add detection code or somehow configure
it manually.

	-hpa