[syslinux] "isolinux.bin missing or corrupt" when booting USB flash drive in old PC

Ady Ady
Sun, 19 Mar 2017 12:09:37 -0000

>
> I ponder whether it would be possible to create a diagnostic MBR
> which does not necessarily have to boot but rather tells what the
> isohybrid MBR would perceive: Presence of partition table,
> EBIOS or CBIOS, block address used with INT 13, content of the block
> read by the first INT 13, ...
>
> One could preserve the isohybrid MBR of an ISO and replace it by
> the diagnostic one for testing purposes:
>
>   dd if=/dev/sdc bs=1 count=512 of=isohybrid_mbr.bin
>
>   dd of=/dev/sdc bs=1 count=432 if=diagnostic_mbr_code.bin
>
> The diagnostic MBR should only use 432 bytes because at byte 432
> to 435 of the isohybrid MBR there is the 512-byte-block address of
> file isolinux.bin, which was patched in by isohybrid or xorriso.
> So the code would be able to work with any isohybrid ISO.
>
>
> Have a nice day :)
>
> Thomas
>

You might be interested in:
 http://repo.or.cz/syslinux.git/tree/HEAD:/diag

which ATM generate "handoff.bin and at least 2 geodsp*.{bin,img(gz)}.

Please note that these were not intended specifically for ISOLINUX /
ISO9660, yet you might still find them useful(?).

As I mentioned before, there is also "isolinux-debug.bin", but it is
not supported by isohybrid, AFAIK.

Regards,
Ady.