Slashdot Mirror

Looking at the subject line of the comments, this decision didn't go over well here...

I don't use XP, I like it; Only went to Win7 as Battle Field 3 required it or I'd still be using XP.
I'm sure there are more like me that didn't upgrade as they didn't have a reason.

I appreciate this as well for the fact that miniXP is being treated as public domain, and will be upgraded.
Linux excluded, for me the miniXP has overtaken a Win98 boot disk when it comes to Windows recovery software.

FWIW: Most of my USB pendrives will boot into a Win98 DOS window that will read and write to NTFS drives.
http://bootdisk.com/

Sometimes you need a good boot disk that will load DOS, and run Ghost on it. In my experience, making bootdisks on floppies is a lot easier than trying to use CDs or USB flash sticks. Every boot disk image I find is made for floppies, and while I can modify the image and burn it to a CD, every boot disk utility I've seen still requires me to write the image to an actual floppy disk, then burn the CD off that. www.bootdisk.com has some great utilities, but this is the exact process that all of the images from that site require. Believe me, if I could skip the whole floppy disk step, I would. If there is another way to do it, it probably requires some expensive software to write the floppy image directly to the CD. The other option, creating a boot disk from absolute scratch, is not within my skill set. My kung-fu isn't THAT good. This means that for the forseeable future, I'm going to need floppy disks.

Here's distributions that boot from floppy: http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=links#floppy http://bootdisk.com/linux.htm Then, you can install whatever you want via PPPoE.\: http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/apds05.html.en http://marc.herbert.free.fr/linux/win2linstall.html Here's some recommendations from a 486'er: http://www.ipt.ntnu.no/~knutb/linux486/linux486.html

Yes, you can connect the drive to a recent PC (a few years old would be better as floppy drives are uncommon now). The power connector is the same as modern HDD but the data connector has changed. In 1984 floppy drives the cable connector plugged onto the edge of the PCB. Get the cable on eBay.

Epson made well engineered PCs, I have an Epson PX-8 from 1984 (laptop running CP/M) still working.

http://www.bootdisk.com/

Just off the top of my head .. try
http://www.bootdisk.com/. They either have it, or they will have a link for it.

USB Key :
While most old BIOS aren't able to boot from a storage class usb device unlike modern one, there are drivers like DUSE and others, that enable the access to USB devices on those oldies.
So one could make a generic "boots DOS with USB support" bootdisk / bootiso and use it everytime you have to flash some BIOS / Firmware and want to save the new ROM on a USB stick. (The combination "USB BootISO + ROM on a stick" come VERY handy when flashing floppy-less boxes).

Front-ends :
A open variant of GEM (huh... Seals ?) is included in the "larger" distribution of FreeDOS.
Also, for those who need a small box just to surf the web, no need for a full graphical environnement, there stuff like Arachne (full graphical browser, GPL. Description at Wikipedia).
Great for a surfbox, and the old 386 on which you'll run it doesn't draw as much power as a Pentium 4.

I realize this totally misses the point of TFA, but..

Just go to http://www.bootdisk.com/ and download one of many different illicit/fuzzy/licit DOS bootable images, among others. These guys have been around for some time.. ^_^

--Weasel

I'm not sure if this will help you out, but this utility plus any old bootdisk made mine bootable for running things like BIOS updates and diagnostics. If only all systems could boot to USB drives, my life would be so much easier...

You might be interested in taking a look at the site below.
http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm
It has a number of ways to make USB work for DOS.
Several people have verified that the ways work, although I have not gotten any to work. Not Bootdisk.com's fault. I have USB 1.0 on my DOS machine, so, I assume, new 2.0 Flash drives will not work with it. The fact that a Flash drive won't work on the same PC with Win98 confirms this suspicion.

As other will tell you, the 32 gig limit in XP is artificial for various reasons. I found a tool that can use as much space that is mechanicaly possible upto around 2 terrabyte in theory. I say mechanicaly possible because the older IDE adressing space gives limitation as well as the newer 48 bit adressing scheme. Some even older IDE controlers are limited to 8 gig even.

Free Fdisk is amazing. The greatest part is that it understands linux and other OS's filesystem partitions well. Under regular Fdisk, it only show a portion of the partition information EXT and other *'nix partitions use.

I generaly make a regular windows 98se bootdisk from bootdisk.com . You can do this on any windows operatying system. Then after extracting the zip files freefdisk come in, i copy the program directory directly to the boot floppy. Boot to the startup floppy and cd /program then run fdisk form there. Just make sure your workign with the corect drive. It is sometimes preferable to unplug the other harddrives (if any) so you can have more then one partition marked as active as well as make sure your working with the corect drive. After the partition is created you should be able to use the regular format program from the boot disk or the computer. On the same freefdisk site there is a free format utility too but I usualy use the native windows format commands though.

.. because, an OS has one of two choices. Either it uses it's own boot loader, or it requires a third party one.

I don't know anything about ReactOS, but Windows ships with it's own, and always has since 95. If you installed "real" Windows on this computer, it would overwrite the MBR and get rid of Grub. But if installing RactOS does *not* do this, then it likely does not ship with it's own boot loader, so you would *have* to use Grub or some other tool to load it.

Unless it uses the old DOS boot loader but does not ship with it, which would be very weird.

In any case, you can download DOS boot disk images from bootdisk.com and fdisk /mbr, no problem. (if you don't have a flyppy drive, just use the image to make a bootable CD.)

Here's my challenge to the computing world: Find me a DOS version that supports USB hardware, and a USB storage device that can talk to DOS over said hardware, AND that I can boot DOS from if I need to, and I will consider giving up floppies.

Google search string: "dos boot usb"
http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm
http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardware_bootfromusb stick.php
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/5735
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=141064
to post a few...

I do this all the time in the engineering lab to run DOS utilities without floppies or hard drives and still have enough room for a decent sized log file collection.

Where should I send the consulting service fee invoice? ;^)

Find me a DOS version that supports USB hardware, and a USB storage device that can talk to DOS over said hardware, AND that I can boot DOS from if I need to, and I will consider giving up floppies.

• http://www.fdos.org/freedos/news/newsitem/149.html
• http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20021003S0 007
• http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm (how-to)

• Util from HP that some claim works with generic USB drives
  

The best way to upgrade a bios is to use a cd-rom (I user a CDRW for ease) and burn a floppy boot disk image to it. It's very easy to do :

For *nix
========

1 - Go to http://www.bootdisk.com/ and download a Win98SE floppy disk boot image.
2 - Mount the image using the loop functionality :

mount -t vfat -o loop FLOPPY.IMG /mnt

3 - Add your files on it (bios and flash utility) just like you would any other drive
4 - Make an ISO :

mkisofs -r -b FLOPPY.IMG -c boot.cat -o /tmp/bootcd.iso

5 - Burn the ISO and reboot!

Information from : http://www.nenie.org/misc/flashbootcd.html
\

For you 100% Free guys, check option #2 for Windows that uses FreeDos. It works in *nix too, just a bit more complicated.

For Windows
===========

Never done it...but there are some options :

1 - download a bootable CD iso and modify it with a ISO modification program to add your bios files (don't know any good free program to do it so I would suggest option #2)

2 - Dowload FreeDos, add your bios files to the freedos directory and run the mkisofs batch file included to generate an ISO. When you boot Freedos, just select enter for normal boot sequence, then select the install (won't install yet), then select go to prompt.

If you can't boot off of a CD on a recent motherboard, your CD-ROM drive or your CD is bad. I can't remember the last time I bought a motherboard that couldn't boot from CD - even if it was a PCChips/ECS board, it supported it fine.

Windows 98 Second Edition boot disk is by far the best boot disk you will ever find. It reads FAT32 and NTFS. It even reads your cdrom. It is one floppy disk. One day, I hope to combine my DNA with this disk in a gruesome mateing of man and removeable media.

Yep. I went to www.bootdisk.com and grabbed a bootable floppy image, copied the necessary files to update the BIOS into it and then wrote it as the boot image of a bootable CD.

BootDisk.com

Check out these. They have a selection of bootdisks for different purposes. Unfortunately, you do need windows to make them as they come in some dinky VB exe that writes to the floppy instead of a raw image. Anyway, make one and make a few copies and you should be fine for a while.

Honestly, a dos boot disk has to be the most common and easily aquired items in the computer world. You can go to BootDisk.com and get your boot disk. And as far as having win98 to make a 98 boot disk I havent myself or known anyone that actually used win98 to make a boot disk. Again they can make one from newer versions of Win or they can download one.

So if a dos boot disk it the simplest and most common type of disposable boot disks for doing a bios flash than why change.

Side point is that most bios flash utilities and the required boot disk have NOTHING to do with win98. I have seen a trend on newer boards with some additional non-volatile memory onboard that copies the bin to this memory and after a restart to bios level only (read NO OS other than bios) it completes the flash overwrite.

In these cases often a '98 boot disk' will not work anyway since it cannot run properly with any memory managers present. In those cases what I end up doing is formatting a floppy fat and setting the option to make it 'bootable' which copies the lowest level dos system files so basically all you get is command.com. Then it can run the bios upgrade in an abesolute and controlled clean environment.

Suck it up! download a boot disk (there are hundreds of them out there) or make your own (there are even more tutorials on how to make your own I would wager) and get a 10 minute job done in 10 minutes instead of re-inventing the wheel.

Back to the original question about an OS neutral solution, it will probably happen when people start clamoring for it. It wouldn't take much for companies to put a disk image up that has freedos and the new bios image on it so people can flash their bios just by booting the floppy. The problem will arise though when the machine you need to flash won't have a floppy drive, then I guess it's time for the motherboard companies to create ISOs of bootable CDs with the BIOS upgrades.

They have images available for just about any OS you need.

> Try to get one that will let you mount SMB shares from DOS.
Is that even possible? Do you have any idea what I would go through to obtain such a disk?

There is a section at bootdisk.com for network enabled bootdisks. I haven't tried any of them, but Bart's Network Boot Disk claims to have this feature along with SSH and SCP which would be very useful as well.

• Try to keep a known-good video card handy. Then if the computer is really messed up you can pull everything but that video card and one stick of memory to see if you can boot.
• It's also a good idea to keep a known-good network card handy along with driver disks.
• Get a good DOS bootdisk. Try to get one that will let you mount SMB shares from DOS.
• I seem to recall utils to let you read NTFS from DOS too, so try to get that on a disk or CD.
• Copies of Norton Ghost and Parition Magic can come in handy sometimes.
• Is there a way to write to CD-R from DOS? Or maybe Knoppix will work for that. Might be useful for backing up stuff before major surgery.
• Heck, CD-R drives are pretty cheap now ($50-60, I think), so bring one along if you want a very complete kit. Or maybe just pack a cheap 30GB hard drive (I recommend you keep it at 30GB or less so it will work with older BIOSes).
• Knoppix and Memtest86 (as others have mentioned) are very good. Tomsrtbt is also good.
• Pack some zip-ties for making wires and cables neat. And bring something to cut out old ties.
• Bring a paper clip for ejecting stuck CDs.
• Super glue. Duct tape. Thermal compound.
• An "L" shaped phillips screw driver for when a longer one won't fit.
• Bring a hex-head screw driver for removing case screws that have been stripped.
• Something long with a magnet on one end for fishing lost case screws.
• A pair of long, thin "pliers" that lock tight when you close them for gripping things. I forget the name, but they almost look like a medical instrument for clamping veins and such.
• IDE cable, floppy cable, phone cable, ethernet cable. Extra screws of the normal type for computer cases. Extra jumpers.
• A kit to mount a 3.5-inch drive in a 5.25-inch bay.
• I think you can fit the install files for win95/98/Me all on one CD, so burn one and keep it handy for when windows demands the install CD for drivers.
• It might also be a good idea to burn all the service packs and bug fixes you can find for old versions of windows. Include the latest version of IE and DirectX.
• A pair of cheap headphones for testing sound cards.
• A can of compressed air and maybe some of those moistened towels in packets for cleaning stuff. Get some Goo-Gone if you want to be extra prepared.

If you work in tech support for Windows users, you know how easy it appearantly is to forget all your passwords (christ). Or render your harddisk permanently unbootable. So..

This Windows NT password & registry editor bootdisk (linux based) is essential.

Knoppix rules. Boot it up. Recover files from ntfs partition, smbmount the users homedirectory. Voila.

Also, since evey time you need a Win98 bootdisk, you think will be the last time you'll ever need one.. bootdisk.com will come in handy.

I wouldn't swear to it, but it appeared to be a DOS based application which means that you could always create a Free-DOS boot disk and boot from that to update your firmware.

If you don't care about licensing issues, you can get free MS-DOS boot disks from here.

If you're a Mac user, well... then you're screwed. Just make sure you don't buy any of the new high speed (which will most likely be more expensive) DVD-RW media until they release a Mac patch.

Nope, only w2k is bootable.
But you can get floppy images on http://www.bootdisk.com...

CD-R + cdrecord + mkisofs + Image of a DOS floppy and you're "in the zone".

I like the boot disks for sale the best, especially since people actually bid on them. Cripes people!

http://www.bootdisk.com

Gah, I just did the same thing, and pretty close to the time you sent it too.

<HUMOR VAL="on">
But I get extra geek-points for having to create the virtual DOS box to do it on, with VMWARE, DOS 6.2 and SMB network drivers from bootdisk.com and msbackup 6.2 from here. ;)
</HUMOR>

I've tried to use that Windows 2000 boot-off-the-CD repair utility and it has consistently failed to repair any problems I've had.

To fix problems, I've had to boot from a floppy... but wait... no generic floppy boot is possible with W2K. To get a boot disk that would work, so I could get into DOS, so I could fix the problems, I had to download one from here.

Being able to boot off a floppy can be really handy sometimes.

I work with a virus removal group on the undernet that works from the channel #dmsetup. We often locate new stuff all the time. Below Im pasting all my links I usually give out to users. Included are keepers of the gates of hell (stuff you use before you get infected.) and some stuff that gets out out of hell (what you use after your girlfriend opened that attachment)

Cleaners and virus scanner suites

Housecall online antivirus scanner
PC-Cillin virus scanner suite
Central command Virus Scanner Suite
Puppet's Cleaner
Puppet's Cleaner Alternate Site
Mcafee virus removal suite
Norton Antivirus, virus removal suite
Frisk software's f-prot antivirus suite for windows dos and linux

Firewall software

Zone Alarm Firewall
Conseal Firewall

Various tools used to get out of hell or figure out what hell you are in.

Boot disk images
Dmsetup.org
Common port usage/abuses

http://www.bootdisk.com - you can get a fully installable copy of DR-DOS 7.0 there.

... get one here.

Also lots of utilities, drivers, etc.

-Miki

I have needed bootdisks in the past for various reasons and not had the facilities to make the right disk for the job. I have often used http://bootdisk.com to get the bootdisks I need for various situations. Although there are actual images available at the site, many are entrapped in .exe files... Nonetheless, it's been a pretty helpful resource for me.

Easy. In WinXP, insert a floppy disk, go into My Computer, right-click on the FDD icon, select Format. What's that format type I see called "Make MS-DOS system disk"?

The version of DOS it installs is DOS v8.0, the bootstrap used for Windows Me. You can also obtain better DOS bootdisks from bootdisk.com - I use the DR-DOS one for BIOS flashing. Until 64-bit systems become common, DOS will always be there.

buying a copy of w98se just to boot to the dos prompt legally seems kind of... well, if not silly, at least overly anal. if it's that important, freedos works too.