Hi Michael:
I happen to have an "off-brand" 128MB USB stick. I used FORMAT
0.91V and the SYS and 32-bit kernel from fdos.org/kernel
(Development). I booted from a floppy disk and did a "format d:"
and "sys d:" to the USB stick. My primary 500MByte DOS partition
showed up as C: and my extended FAT32 partition showed up as E:.
That went fine. I then booted the USB stick. It boots to a C:
prompt. Unfortunately, the USB stick itself is at A:. A "DIR C:"
shows the contents of my EXTENDED FAT32 partition. "DIR D:"
and "DIR E:" showed errors. DIR A: shows the command.com and kernel.sys
files (and a very short autoexec.bat which didn't run).
I then plugged in the floppy and booted from that again. Everything
worked fine...the stick was D: and C:, D:, and E: are correct and
accessable (as was A:\>). The floppy booted to an A:\> prompt.
What is frustrating is that the kernel detected the three partitions
correctly when it was booted from the USB stick. The relevant messages
were:
WARNING: partition Pri:1 FS 06 has CHS = 0-1-32, not 0-1-1
WARNING: partition Pri:1 FS 06 has CHS = 963-7-32, not 14-254-63
C: HD1, Pri[ 1], CHS = 0-1-32, start = 0MB, size = 120MB
D: HD2, Pri[ 3], CHS = 1919-0-1, start = 15053 MB, size = 478 MB
WARNING: partition Ext:1 FS 0B is not LBA
Please run FDISK to correct this - using LBA to access partition
start 1980-1-1, end = 4850-254-63
E: HD2, Ext[ 1], CHS = 1980-1-1, start = 15531MB, size = 22520 MB
This boots to a C:\ prompt which is WRONG. "DIR C:" shows the
extended partition which the kernel identified above as E:!
DIR D: yields an error:
Error reading from drive D: DOS AREA: unknown command given to driver
DIR E: yields two errors:
IO Error: cylinder > 1023
Error reading from drive E: DOS AREA: unknown command given to driver
Booting from the floppy (unfortunately it is a USB floppy) gives the
following:
C: HD1, Pri[ 3], CHS = 1919-0-1, start = 15053MB, size = 478 MB
WARNING: partition Pri:1 FS 06 has CSH = 0-1-32, not 0-1-1
WARNING: partition Pri:1 FS 06 has CSH = 963-7-32, not 14-254-63
D: HD2, Pri[ 1], CHS = 0-1-32, start = 0MB, size = 120MB
WARNING: partition Ext:1 FS 0B is not LBA
[run FDISK blah, blah, blah]
E: HD1, Ext[ 1], CHS = 1980-1-1, start = 15531 MB, size = 22520 MB
This boots to A:\> prompt (the floppy drive) and dir c:, dir d:, dir e:
work and show what I would expect from the drive letter mapping above.
Note that the drives are mapped in a different order. DIR A: also works
and shows the floppy.
I might suggest creating a FAT partition or two on your hard disk
and trying again!
I will happily try one of your sticks if you think it will make a
difference.
Mark
Michael Devore wrote:
Last night I picked up a few off-brand 128M USB sticks and tried
formatting them to boot FreeDOS on my system. As a pleasant surprise,
the latest FORMAT 0.91v and SYS from 2/20/2006 32-bit kernel formatted
all three brands to FreeDOS-bootable sticks -- although each received a
runtime FORMAT message "GDP default BPB read error 0F" which didn't
appear to affect anything. Much different experience than my last
mucking around with boot images and disk patches to get a bootable
stick; good job everyone involved in upgrading the FreeDOS capabilities
there.
Since USB booting of FreeDOS remains an issue for several people, I'd
like to send the sticks to any volunteer who has failures booting a
modern FreeDOS-format USB stick, or doesn't have a USB stick available,
to test how/if it works. I'll cover the postage to send it, you simply
have to e-mail me your address. You can mail it back after you are
done or, if shipping costs are substantial, you can keep it, although
obviously I'd prefer to get the stick back to pass on to other testers.
Simply drop me an e-mail. Details on the offer follow...
The requirements are that you have a 386+ (probably a Pentium+) machine
with a USB port and a BIOS that supports booting from a USB stick. On
my test system that means selecting USB-ZIP, other systems may have a
boot selection called USB mass storage, and more recent BIOS setups may
be able to directly identify the USB stick as a boot source while it's
plugged in. The stick will most likely come up as drive A: when it boots.
What I want to know is whether the boot works, what you had to specify
in your BIOS to get it to boot, what type of machine you have, and
anything else which seems notable. The sticks are formatted FAT16 and
have no CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT, although I have included the latest
versions of HIMEM.EXE and EMM386.EXE if you have time to test booting
with HIMEM and EMM386 active (if it boots OK without them loaded and not
with, that's important news to know).
If you already have a good booting stick, I may be interested in your
machine's information for comparison purposes.
For future tests I may check FAT32 format, plus see what might be
possible, if anything, to get a stick booting under other USB
selections, e.g. USB-FDD, USB-CD ROM, and USB-HD here, and/or move to a
different default drive from A:. But for now I want to establish we
have happy boots for basic USB stick setup.
If you have any questions, drop me an e-mail or post here as appropriate.
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