[dencorso]

I use both Nero 6.6 and UltraISO. I might be intersted if it gives me fine control to build unusual bootable .ISOs (as you said it does). I don't see how I can use a 36 MiB image with either Nero or UltraISO. However it'd be a bonus if it does run both on 9x/ME and XP, although a DOS only program would be welcome too.

[rloew]

dencorso, on 17 July 2011 - 03:57 PM, said:

I use both Nero 6.6 and UltraISO. I might be intersted if it gives me fine control to build unusual bootable .ISOs (as you said it does). I don't see how I can use a 36 MiB image with either Nero or UltraISO. However it'd be a bonus if it does run both on 9x/ME and XP, although a DOS only program would be welcome too.

Who said Nero supports non-standard bootable ISOs?

[dencorso]

rloew, on 17 July 2011 - 04:23 PM, said:

Who said Nero supports non-standard bootable ISOs?

Nobody, me included. I said I looked (after all I have both installed) and neither Nero 6.6 nor UltraISO 9.36 (the latest) do, AFAI can see.

[rloew]

dencorso, on 17 July 2011 - 04:39 PM, said:

rloew, on 17 July 2011 - 04:23 PM, said:

Who said Nero supports non-standard bootable ISOs?

Nobody, me included. I said I looked (after all I have both installed) and neither Nero 6.6 nor UltraISO 9.36 (the latest) do, AFAI can see.

I was referring to the "you" in "(as you said it does)" in your earlier post.

[dencorso]

I see. While I do strive to be clear, some times ambiguity gets the best of me.
So, just to set things right, what I wrote was:

Quote

I might be intersted if it gives me fine control to build unusual bootable .ISOs (as you said it does).

My intention was that those "it"s should mean "your software utilities", not Nero nor UltraISO. But "it" is too vague.
Sorry, my bad.

[rloew]

dencorso, on 17 July 2011 - 08:13 PM, said:

I see. While I do strive to be clear, some times ambiguity gets the best of me.
So, just to set things right, what I wrote was:

Quote

I might be intersted if it gives me fine control to build unusual bootable .ISOs (as you said it does).

My intention was that those "it"s should mean "your software utilities", not Nero nor UltraISO. But "it" is too vague.
Sorry, my bad.

The answer to your intended question is yes. My utilities allow you to specify the Emulation Type Code, including No Emulation, overriding the default based on the size of the Boot Image chosen. The only requirement is that the Boot Image be a multiple of 512 Bytes.

[jaclaz]

rloew, on 17 July 2011 - 03:26 PM, said:

Is there any interest in them, to justify packaging them?

Who knows?

My remark was more a "generic" one, you have something in your closet, you may be willing to sell it, but until you don't take it out of the closet and put it on display on your desk, under a big "for sale" sign you have 100% possibilities (read as "certainty") that noone will ever buy it, or the other way round 0% probabilities of ever selling it.

Once you have it in plain view on the desk it is possible that someone is interested to it, you will have n% probabilities that someone will buy it, and no matter how little n will be it will always verify the n>=0 condition, with a chance of also verifying the n>0 one.

jaclaz

[dencorso]

Here is the appropriate FAT-12 36 MiB floppy image. Usually double-compression doesn't give good results, but this is an unusual file, so I gave it a shot, and it worked!

@jaclaz: Now it's up to you... can you convince mkisofs to create a bootable .ISO from it?

Attached File(s)

•  Empty_FAT12_36MiB_Floppy.rar (1.23K)
  Number of downloads: 34

[jaclaz]

dencorso, on 18 July 2011 - 05:38 AM, said:

Here is the appropriate FAT-12 36 MiB floppy image. Usually double-compression doesn't give good results, but this is an unusual file, so I gave it a shot, and it worked!

Strangely enough, the idea is not really-really new
http://bootcd.narod.ru/images_e.htm
(though in those cases the .rar was inside the .zip, and you made it the other way round )

dencorso, on 18 July 2011 - 05:38 AM, said:

@jaclaz: Now it's up to you... can you convince mkisofs to create a bootable .ISO from it?

I won't even try , at least for the moment , I mean, let's go in steps, I would be happy enough to have it work with a 3840 Kb or 5760 Kb one

jaclaz

[rloew]

jaclaz, on 18 July 2011 - 02:46 AM, said:

rloew, on 17 July 2011 - 03:26 PM, said:

Is there any interest in them, to justify packaging them?

My remark was more a "generic" one, you have something in your closet, you may be willing to sell it, but until you don't take it out of the closet and put it on display on your desk, under a big "for sale" sign you have 100% possibilities (read as "certainty") that noone will ever buy it, or the other way round 0% probabilities of ever selling it.

Once you have it in plain view on the desk it is possible that someone is interested to it, you will have n% probabilities that someone will buy it, and no matter how little n will be it will always verify the n>=0 condition, with a chance of also verifying the n>0 one.

jaclaz

I could write a Program that turns the background to pink. Would it even be worth investing in a "for sale" sign considering that I have never seen anyone show an interest in a pink background. How do I know that N>X where X is the cost of the "for sale" sign.

I have over 1700 Programs. Putting them on my Desk would cause the Desk to collapse under the weight of the "for sale" signs.
The same would be true of my Website.

This thread is the only one I have seen indicating an interest in extended Bootable CD Floppy Emulation, so this is the only "desk" worth putting it on.

Incidentally:

Quote

Who knows?

Doesn't help raise the value of N.

@dencorso: Your latest Image is not totally empty but it should work. I would have worded it differently.

[dencorso]

And work it does! I can boot the image directly, with grub4dos... and I can boot it as the boot sector of a CD! Yay!
Thanks for the great info!

Attached File(s)

•  Clip2.GIF (10.56K)
  Number of downloads: 1

[jaclaz]

dencorso, on 19 July 2011 - 02:33 AM, said:

and I can boot it as the boot sector of a CD!

And how did you create the .iso (or CD)?

@rloew
You need a sturdier desk! (or a self-standing "for sale" sign )

@all
Find attached an early, as usual half- @§§ed (in this particular case 3/4 ) approach .

Credits go to rloew and to the good guys at MenuetOS :
http://www.menuetos.net/cdboot.htm


jaclaz

Attached File(s)

•  sfloppyCD_01.zip (117.19K)
  Number of downloads: 25

This post has been edited by jaclaz: 19 July 2011 - 06:38 AM

[rloew]

jaclaz, on 19 July 2011 - 03:34 AM, said:

@rloew
You need a sturdier desk! (or a self-standing "for sale" sign )

And I suppose you are going to read all 1700 of them.
Would anyone else? If so, raise your mouse.

Quote

@all
Find attached an early, as usual half- @§§ed (in this particular case 3/4 ) approach .

Credits go to rloew and to the good guys at MenuetOS :
http://www.menuetos.net/cdboot.htm


jaclaz

I downloaded your attachment. The headers appear to be padded for a specific CD configuration, it would not support Joliet, for example, and do not include even a null ISO block.

I already have a single tool that can take a Floppy Boot Image, like the one Dencorso posted, along with one or more folders of Files for the rest of the CD/DVD, and burn them in one step.
The other tools I mentioned previously were to facilitate making the Floppy Boot Image.

[dencorso]

Here's what I did, using the tools I already had, and a lot of patience:
(i) Tried to populate my original image with WinImage, but the result had messed-up FATs and was unbootable. I may have been unlucky in this attempt, but I did not stop to test whether WinImage always blorks the FATs or if it indeed was an unfortunate run.
(ii) Tried to populate my original image using jaclaz's VDM, which relies on Ken Kato's VDK, and this worked like magic! Then I run Win XP's chkdsk on it and it reported no problems.
(iii) Proceeded to boot the image directly with grub4dos, and succeeded. Then, while booted from the image, run MS-DOS SCANDISK (from Win ME) on it, and it found no problems. Here's the relevant excerpt of my MENU.LST:

Quote

title RRL 36MiB
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /boot_fd.ima
map /boot_fd.ima (fd0)
map --hook
rootnoverify (fd0)
chainloader --force (fd0)+1

(iv) Fed the image to UltraISO, and had it create a bootable 185 MB mini-CD ISO, and it did so. However it was unbootable. But it had incorporated the full Floppy image and created a reasonable ISO, to start with. On the other hand, it decided it was a no-emulation boot image it had loaded. And, BTW, it blorked the boot sector, and specifically destroyed the BPB, while creating this image. So, in the Default Booting Catalog, I set the media type to 03 and the partition type to 06 (!, but probably it could have been any value), and, using WinHex, copied the known-good floppy image again, over the blorked image UltraISO had included in the .ISO (they did have the same size, of course). I saved a copy of the floppy image blorked by UltraISO and compared it (with Beyond Compare) to the known-good one, finding that all the damage done was solely to the boot sector (so I might have copied over again to the .ISO just the boot sector instead of the whole image). The ISO 9660 part of the image I populated with 3 videoclips, just to fill space, and the full ISO ended up having a 91 MiB size.
(v) Fed the image to Nero and it burned it into a mini-CD RW, which it did without complaining.
(vi) Booted the freshly burned CD and took that picture I posted yesterday.

[jaclaz]

@rloew

Quote

And I suppose you are going to read all 1700 of them.

Yes, it is very possible, I am usually very accurate and punctilious .

Quote

I downloaded your attachment. The headers appear to be padded for a specific CD configuration, it would not support Joliet, for example, and do not include even a null ISO block.

Sure they are the headers from the Menuet Os guys, in their own words:
http://www.menuetos.net/cdboot.htm

Quote

Note that the CD image is for booting only
and does not include a iso9660 filesystem.

more generally I defined myself the approach as half-@§§ed (actually 2/4-@§§ed) exactly to save other people the need of coming out saying:

Quote

Hey, wait, that's not fully OK!

Quote

I already have a single tool that can take a Floppy Boot Image, like the one Dencorso posted, along with one or more folders of Files for the rest of the CD/DVD, and burn them in one step.

You share some common trait with one of the greatest geniuses in the whole history of mathematics, Pierre de Fermat :

Quote

I have discovered a truly marvelous proof that it is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second into two like powers. This margin is too narrow to contain it.

@dencorso

• Experiment for the day :
  
• populate your image with MSDOS 7.1 files+whatever else you might want to test
  
• use this app:
  http://www.minidvdsoft.com/isocreator/
  to create a bootable .iso with it (+ any files you want in the "accessible CD" part)
  
• hexedit in the .iso AA5555AA8802 to AA5555AA8803
  
• try booting the .iso in Qemu or whatever Vm you use

jaclaz

[dencorso]

Yes, it works!
And no, I did not use any VM, but an Asus EeePC with an external USB CD/DVD burner as the test machine.

[rloew]

jaclaz, on 20 July 2011 - 02:15 AM, said:

@rloew

Quote

And I suppose you are going to read all 1700 of them.

Yes, it is very possible, I am usually very accurate and punctilious .

One so far.
Reduce that by the fact that Reading about something doesn't guarantee purchase.
Still leaves N<1700*X

Quote

Quote

I already have a single tool that can take a Floppy Boot Image, like the one Dencorso posted, along with one or more folders of Files for the rest of the CD/DVD, and burn them in one step.

You share some common trait with one of the greatest geniuses in the whole history of mathematics, Pierre de Fermat :

Quote

I have discovered a truly marvelous proof that it is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second into two like powers. This margin is too narrow to contain it.

That's called "Closed-Source".

Also, have you ever heard of a "pre-marketing survey"?

This post has been edited by rloew: 20 July 2011 - 11:42 AM

[jaclaz]

rloew, on 20 July 2011 - 11:35 AM, said:

That's called "Closed-Source".

Well, no.
That's called "I have something that is not currently available, for free or for $. Additionally, WHEN and IF it will be available, it will be "Closed-Source"."
Corollary:
"I won't also not reveal that I have this thing ready in the closet, unless someone will torture me"

rloew, on 20 July 2011 - 11:35 AM, said:

Also, have you ever heard of a "pre-marketing survey"?

Sure, it is something that is done once one has decided to market something, in order to forecast revenues, if they are calculated to be too low, the item is not marketed after all.

Of course you are perfectly free to release (or NOT release) anything as well as market (or avoid marketing) any of your tools, that's the very good thing about freedom .

But you have to see it from a purely pragmatical viewpoint.

Real, physical things produced have usually 5 main source for costs:

• development costs
  
• marketing/advertising costs
  
• production costs
  
• distribution costs
  
• product support costs

When you talk about "immaterial" things like software item #3 is 0, item #4 is near to 0 (electronic dowmload) and #5 should be near to 0 as well (if the product is good ).
So you have only two items:

• development costs
  
• marketing/advertising costs

of which you ALREADY sustained the biggest item #1, so every cent you can get from the product is better than nothing.
Pre-marketing surveys may be useful to target the retail price and to validate the usefulness of an advertising campaign, for which till now you had no costs.

@dencorso
You mean you doubted about it?
You deserve to go behind the green glass door as "leery, but heedful peep "!

jaclaz

[rloew]

jaclaz, on 20 July 2011 - 01:10 PM, said:

rloew, on 20 July 2011 - 11:35 AM, said:

That's called "Closed-Source".

Well, no.
That's called "I have something that is not currently available, for free or for $. Additionally, WHEN and IF it will be available, it will be "Closed-Source"."
Corollary:
"I won't also not reveal that I have this thing ready in the closet, unless someone will torture me"

It already exists, so it is available. If someone bought it right this minute, I would write some instructions for it and E-Mail it. It does not have to be advertised to be available. I have already sold products to MSFN forum members that were never advertised on my Website.
No one asked the price or even if it was available. Everyone knows it exists. It is not torture to ask. The Forum does have a PM option, and my E-Mail Address is published.

Quote

rloew, on 20 July 2011 - 11:35 AM, said:

Also, have you ever heard of a "pre-marketing survey"?

Sure, it is something that is done once one has decided to market something, in order to forecast revenues, if they are calculated to be too low, the item is not marketed after all.

Of course you are perfectly free to release (or NOT release) anything as well as market (or avoid marketing) any of your tools, that's the very good thing about freedom .

But you have to see it from a purely pragmatical viewpoint.

Real, physical things produced have usually 5 main source for costs:

• development costs
  
• marketing/advertising costs
  
• production costs
  
• distribution costs
  
• product support costs

#2 is the key here. Even at minimum wage, I would have to sell several to cover my time, or charge an unacceptable price.
#4 is not really anywhere near zero. Just the mechanics of making a Paypal payment takes up a lot of E-Mail to-and-fro. Even worse when it is not an option.
#5 isn't that small, no matter how good the product is. They want to use it for purposes it was not intended for, they keep asking about my upgrade policy, even after I said "free upgrades", etc.
Add them together, and consider what I just said above.

I think I will wait until the Workaround discussion runs it's course and see who has, what dencorso described as "lots of patience", such as you I'm sure, and who would rather not.

[dencorso]

Back ontopic, please! I've done too much thread surgery already.

Here's the progress we've made:
1) The 36 MiB floppy image had to be created by hand, but that's done (by myself), and it's available for download.
2) It was truncated. That's been solved by using DCopyNT (by Jorgen Bosman).
3) The image is empty (at least that's what the FATs say...) so it must be populated): VDM (by jaclaz) / VDK (by Ken Kato) solves that nicely
4) The bootable ISO must be created. That's solved now by using The Free ISO Creator, by miniDVDsoft.
5) I've used Nero 6.6 to burn the ISO onto a physical medium (a mini-CD RW, in my case)... but any burner can do it, so it's not a problem.
Of course there are some hexediting to be done, for adjusting the Media Type in the El Torito Boot Catalog Default Entry (and more hexediting in case one wants to substitute the boot sector in the floppy image), but that's acceptable.

But what I miss is having an application to edit the ISO 9660 part of the ISO. I tried UltraISO for that, but it trashes the image. My current working hypothesis is that UltraISO might do it right *iff* (iff = if and only if) one changes the media byte to 0 (no-emulation) before editing, and then, after all is done, changes it back to 3. This is what I'm going to test from now on.

And more, although 36 MiB is the largest floppy image that can be used in an El Torito floppy emulation boot, I do suspect one can use a 127 MiB (the maximum FAT-12 image) to boot, in case on uses reanimatolog's great BCDW. Since jaclaz's pointed to reanimatolog's image repository, some posts above, I think it's just fair to mention it here, too. But I'll let that for later, at the moment. BTW, BCDW *is* a great way of creating multiboot CDs, in my experience. And, for sure, if FAT-12 is not used, reanimatolog himself has already gone well beyond that (see pic) so I'm sure the 127 MiB image will work. And, for the more adventurous, the german page hosting the last alpha version of BCDW is gone, but here's bcdw201a.rar. It has MD5 = CC821E28B3ED5FC32821D0861630CD6C. The stable 1.50Z version, which I use, can be found here, of course, as always.

@Multibooter: Do look into this, if you really are interested in > 100 MiB bootable diskete images working in optical media.