Operating Systems > Linux and UNIX

Copying Boot-floopy in Linux

<< < (2/2)

Calum:
try using dd to make a disk image as above. this should contain the boot sector and everything. then you can burn that same disk image to a CD in the same way you would a normal iso. the only way i see this falling down is that a floppy might not have the same kind of boot sector that a CD has, also the filesystem on a floppy is not the same as on a CD. in fact that last reason is why i think it probably won't work. You'll have to do a copy/paste of some sort and seperately use whatever CD burning options are required to make the CD bootable in my opinion. and it still might not work depending on whether any of the win98 boot stuff is hard coded to a particular device (not likely but possible).

beltorak0:
Basic conceptual error abound.

There is no boot-sector format for CD's.  What happens is that the CD-Rom detects a floppy image on the cd that is marked as being an el-torito boot floppy, and the cdrom tricks the bios into believing that floppy image is actually in the floppy drive.  That is called "floppy emulation boot".  A later spec allowed "HD emulation boot" and "no-emulation mode"; but it works the same way.

So no, you can't just copy a floppy image to a f/s, translate it to iso9660, and expect it to boot.  you have to use the "mkisofs -b /path/to/boot_floppy.img" to set the correct flags on that file as being complient with the el-torito boot spec.  "man mkisofs" for more info.

I'm still trying to make a boot cd; the following links might prove useful:
no. 1
no. 2
This one might be a little more germain: but you still need a bootable cdrom/boot disk to make it work.

keep us posted... i think i might have another crack at it this weekend....

[ February 06, 2003: Message edited by: beltorak ]

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page