The best way to boot DOS ??? - Printable Version

The best way to boot DOS ??? - Printable Version

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+--- Thread: The best way to boot DOS ??? (/showthread.php?tid=611)

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RE: The best way to boot DOS ??? - bzzz - 12-23-2022

(10-01-2020, 06:58 PM)markm Wrote: I use hdsentinel dos a lot to check hard drives on machines. I also have an extra partition created on my thumb drive, partly for situations like this. I run hdsentinel dos in memdisk mode with ventoy, at "a:\" dos prompt I type "c:\" to get to my spare partition with .exe files on it and run from there.

All of the above works for me, but I cannot really execute or copy files. The USB drive does have an activity LED and the access pattern is the very same for hours, but there's no progress (or error messages, for that matter). Changing from FAT16 to FAT32 does not have any effect, partition space is created via

Code:
./Ventoy2Disk.sh -r 128 -i /dev/sdb

and then formatted accordingly.
Anything obvious that I might be doing wrong?

:edit:
I've now formatted another USB drive with unetbootin and FreeDOS, that works for me (flashing Intel NICs with the 25.0 software release; requires basic boot options without HIMEM or anything to work properly), but obviously that isn't a multiboot solution. I'd still appreciate some trick that makes this viable with Ventoy!

RE: The best way to boot DOS ??? - nguyen ha thai trong - 12-23-2022

The available solution is to use rufus (https://rufus.ie/en/) to burn Hirens.BootCD.15.2.iso (https://www.hirensbootcd.org) to the file name.vhd created and mounted by Simple VHD Manager v1.4 (https://www.sordum.org/8705/simple-vhd-manager-v1-4/) and then use grubfm.iso (https://github.com/a1ive/grub2-filemanager/releases) browse to the file name.vhd and enter then select boot use map.Copy/pase operations will be performed when you select filemanager from the dos progpram menu, and you should know that still can't access the usb even though dos supports it read write ntfs or load usb driver, so only copy file to file name.vhd (virtual drive).

RE: The best way to boot DOS ??? - nguyen ha thai trong - 12-24-2022

No matter how you format the partitions of the ventoy usb, dos will not accept the usb because it does not understand multi-partition for usb. The reason you (bzzz) use unetbootin to create a freedos bootable usb is because the usb now only has 1 partition

RE: The best way to boot DOS ??? - Steve2926 - 12-24-2022

1. Format the main first partition as NTFS
2. Add grubfm_multiarch.iso to your Ventoy drive https://github.com/a1ive/grub2-filemanager/releases/tag/v7.4.0
3. Get suitable DOS image file (unzip the one in Easy2Boot at \_ISO\DOS\MNU\Freedos288.IMA.gz) and rename file as FREEDOS.IMG
4. Legacy Boot to Ventoy - load grubfm_multiarch.iso iso
5. Navigate to the FREEDOS.IMG file, press ENTER and choose 'Boot floppy image (map)' option

You now are in FreeDOS, D: is the Ventoy Partition 1 NTFS volume.
You can use CD command to get to any folder and run any DOS program directly from Partition 1.

If you dont want to load the DOS NTFS driver then make Partition 3 a FAT32 partition and place your DOS executables and flash files in that partition.

You could also construct a Ventoy F6 user menu which runs grub.exe (grub4dos) using the linux command?
https://rmprepusb.com/tutorials/062-chainload-syslinux-from-grub4dos-grub-grub2-and-vice-versa/#LOAD_GRUB4DOS_FROM_GRUB2

Using \ventoy\ventoy_grub.cfg

Code:
# use F6 in Ventoy to load it

# case sensitive filenames

if [ "${grub_platform}_${grub_cpu}" = "pc_i386" -a -f ${vtoy_iso_part}/grub.exe -a -f ${vtoy_iso_part}/Freedos.IMG ]; then

    menuentry "Load FreeDOS (MBR)" --class=custom {

        # set default partition for img file - grub.exe must be in root of Ventoy partition

        set root=${vtoydev},1

        set opts='map --mem /Freedos.IMG (fd0); map --hook; root (fd0); chainloader /kernel.sys || chainloader +1;'

        linux ${vtoy_iso_part}/grub.exe --config-file=${opts}

    }

fi

You can get grub.exe from zip file at https://github.com/chenall/grub4dos/releases/download/0.4.6a/grub4dos-0.4.6a-2022-12-22.7z

Ptn1 can be NTFS or FAT32 so DOS can access it.