Topic: Access real floppy in DOS-emulation mode
started by: martinx
Posted by martinx on Dec. 08 2003,20:07
Most computers do support 2 floppies: Enter BIOS setup mode, floppy A: is enabled by default, but floppy B: is disabled. You can enable floppy b: and access it in DOS-emulation mode directly.Let's talk about other way:
1) There are 2 files in c:\easyboot\disk1\ezboot, named useflp.com and useemu.com
2) When boot to emulation mode, drive A: map to the image
3) run useflp.com will turn drive A: to map to real floppy
4) run useemu.com will switch back to the image
Posted by abrahamk on Dec. 08 2003,23:38
after running useflp.com in the dos mode, pc is unable to locate the original CD drive from where it was booted. Then it is not possible to run useemu.com. Is there any parameters with useflp? useflp.com requires a floppy at the time the command is issued. Formating a floppy at that time with the booted OS becomes difficult. But when you boot in winME image created by the bootme.exe (ftp://ftp1.fkkt.uni-lj.si/bootdisks/bootme.exe) without enabling the bios or running useflp.com your drive B: is auto-enabled. Can we do the same with w9x and dos6x?
Posted by martinx on Dec. 09 2003,19:51
useflp.com does work with DOS 6.22, but not with Windows 98.
Posted by abrahamk on Dec. 10 2003,01:56
Even in Dos622 when 'useflp' is run then 'Not ready reading drive A:' error occured. Unless you insert a Disk in A: you cannot abort or proceed. once you insert a Disk in drive A: then mapping of the original CD drive from where booted is gone. then how can you run 'useemu'? Am I wrongly issuing the commands? My intention is to format a floppy in drive A in Dos622 to be used in older pcs which cannot be booted thru a Cd Rom.
Posted by Oxtie on Dec. 10 2003,11:54
| Quote (abrahamk @ Dec. 10 2003,06:56) |
| Even in Dos622 when 'useflp' is run then 'Not ready reading drive A:' error occured. Unless you insert a Disk in A: you cannot abort or proceed. once you insert a Disk in drive A: then mapping of the original CD drive from where booted is gone. then how can you run 'useemu'? Am I wrongly issuing the commands? My intention is to format a floppy in drive A in Dos622 to be used in older pcs which cannot be booted thru a Cd Rom. |
hmmm... It seems that this is also one of my problem since the thing looses its way back to CD!
My Shell Command (based on 9x GUI engine) fails due this or some other related "bug" ;) Martin dude said this is some kinda core bug in diskemu
also kinda hard to fix! I think this option should be taken out (may be it will solve my problem
)
Posted by Donovan B on Jan. 18 2004,18:14
I don't know about the rest of the user base, but none of the several hundred machines I support has a B: drive.When I was using Win98, I made an Easy CD Creator boot cd with a customized Win98 Boot floppy as the CD floppy emulation disk. Easy CD Creator would use A: as the emulator and automatically map the physical floppy to B:
This doesn't work in EasyBoot. I see that a number of folks here, including myself, would REALLY like this ability.
In the mean time, I've resorted to using a USB disk from my Win98 boot floppy, which is loaded from EasyBoot. That way I have removable drive access, thanks to the Panasonic DOS USB driver.
The useflp.com and useemu.com tools do not allow simultanious access to the physical floppy and to the emulated floppy. Most new computers do NOT have a B: drive, but that doesn't mean EasyBoot can't map B: to the first physical floppy, while keeping the emulator on the DOS A:
Donovan
Posted by c61preuss on Feb. 15 2004,05:12
Hi there,i also had the problem that i can't access my physical floppydrive after booting a floppyimage from easyboot.
I've created a CD which contains the virusscanner F-PROT (DOS version) an i wasn't amused to create a
new one every two or three days to use the newest signaturefiles. So i've found a workaround with XMSDSK
for this problem by changing my AUTOEXEC.BAT that is used in the floppyimage.
And here it is:
@ECHO OFF
REM check the dummy-parameter %1 to indicate that i can skip all the lines
REM that are already executed on the emulated floppydrive (first time %1 is empty)
IF NOT "%1"=="" GOTO ExecOnRamdisk
REM create a ramdisk of 6 MB with driveletter R:
A:\XMSDSK.EXE 6144 R: /y /t
ECHO.
ECHO copying bootsystem to ramdisk ...
ECHO.
R:
CD \
REM i like the XCOPY command from DRDOS 6 (copying hidden and systemfiles)
A:\XCOPY.EXE A:\*.* R:\*.* /ehrsv
REM loading german keyboardlayout
R:\KEYB.COM GR,,R:\KEYBOARD.SYS
REM using driveletter M: for cdrom lets enough room for partitions and/or
REM physical drives with driveletters from C:, D:, E: ...
R:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:CD_DRIVER /L:K
REM setting all variables to use the ramdisk R: instead of drive A:
SET TMP=R:\TEMP
SET TEMP=%TMP%
IF NOT EXIST %TEMP%\NUL MD %TEMP%
SET COMSPEC=R:\COMMAND.COM
SET PATH=R:\;
R:\SMARTDRV.EXE /V 8192 2048
REM checking for a harddiskdrive that can be accessed by F-PROT
REM YN.EXE is a little "C" program i've created a few years ago
REM (it accepts only the keys for Y and N, an on N the errorlevel is 1)
SET ntfsdrv=0
IF EXIST C:\NUL GOTO Restart2Ramdisk
ECHO !!! No FAT-Drive (FAT16/FAT32) found !!!
YN.EXE load NTFS-Driver (readonly)
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO LastExit
REM loading driver for access to NTFS-partitions
R:\NTFSDOS.EXE
SET ntfsdrv=1
:Restart2Ramdisk
REM restarting this batchfile from the ramdisk
REM so we never need access to the emulated floppydrive anymore
R:\AUTOEXEC.BAT dummy
:ExecOnRamdisk
REM switching to the physical floppydrive A:
REM if there's no disk in the drive i don't need to press a key
ECHO.|R:\USEFLP.COM>NUL
REM copying all needed files from the CD to the ramdisk
R:\XCOPY.EXE M:\F-PROT\*.* R:\F-PROT\*.* /ehrsv
YN.EXE copy new signaturefiles from disk
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO ask4ntfs
:CopyFromDisk
REM here we have access to the physical floppydrive
XCOPY.EXE A:\*.* R:\F-PROT\*.* /ehrsv
YN.EXE copy from another disk
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO ask4ntfs
GOTO CopyFromDisk
:ask4ntfs
IF "%ntfsdrv%"=="1" GOTO ExecScan
YN.EXE load NTFS-Driver (readonly)
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO ExecScan
R:\NTFSDOS.EXE
SET ntfsdrv=1
:ExecScan
R:
CD \F-PROT
F-PROT.EXE
:LastExit
Carsten
Posted by Oxtie on Mar. 02 2004,11:57
| Quote (c61preuss @ Feb. 15 2004,10:12) |
| Hi there, ...... .... ... ... Carsten |
This batch is somewhat tricky for me to understand but did you make an entire batch so that you don't loose track of original CDRom drive Letter?
If yes then, Check out the original W98 IMG (within easyboot) there is a file "FindCD.com".
Give a command "EDIT /78 /H FindCD.com" and change the \WIN98\Setup.exe to any kind of file that you are gonna put in your CD! The rest, put the FINDCD command on Autoexec and it does the next job
Posted by elinks on Mar. 09 2004,16:00
Now that we know how to access a real floppy from the ramdisk version of DOS. Is it possible to use NTFSDOS to access the remaining drives on our system? I tried to use the run w98dos.img followed by run NTFSDOS.img but only the 1st run was executed. (run w98DOS.img ; run NTFSDOS.img)I then tried to combine the two DOS and NTFSDOS together but that approach fell apart due to the command.com files (I cant understand the contents of either with a hex editor)
I could be going about this all wrong?
Posted by neil_win on Mar. 11 2004,16:15
We use a W98 boot CD that runs PC Check, Ghost, PQmagic, Maxtor Hard Disk Diags and McAfee command line via a very useful Batch file (with variables for various McAfee options), and it's brilliant.Only thing was no access to NTFS for McAfee Antivirus
BartPE has solved this and with EasyBoot the DOS and BartPE can co-exist on one AV CD
EXCEPT FOR
1. floppy emulation / real floppy issues - solved as per Abrahamk in forum above by using WinME DOS - now works perfectly A: is emulation and B: is real floppy
2. Maxtor 4 has to run from boot area i.e floppy emulation area and it was taking 3 mins instead of 1min to detect hard disks. Also hung after a test is run and reqd reboot for another test to be selected - Solved by buying UltraISO and extracting BartPE and building it with EasyBoot (Bart uses a non-standard ISO format - maybe this causes issue) - idea from martinx on forum
3. PC Check testing floppy media gave failures on every track - solved as per 2. above
Great when a plan eventually comes together !
Thanks to the Forum contributors
Posted by neil_win on Mar. 12 2004,18:02
NTFSDOSI tried NTFSDOS from Winternals and it was a driver you loaded in DOS giving DOS the ability to map to NTFS partitions
Gave up because it used up the memory McAfee wanted to run in and the free version is read-only. The reseller wanted nearly £1000 for first year on read-write and the bundled software (Administration Pak)!
To access NTFS I use BartPE - it's free - it works - it does lots !
see www.nu2.nu/pebuilder
Posted by neil_win on Mar. 16 2004,19:03
Hate to admit I was wrong or partially write, but after THOROUGH testing !MAXTOR Powermax.exe 4.06 needs to be in RAMdrive with DRVINF.TXT - it seems to check logfile before it finds drives and it needs to be writeable
PC Check the floppy media checks came back to the DOS OS problems with floppies that are solved by using ME
PC Check failing to load other than Caldera DOS 7 / 98 - uses a lot of conventional memory which EasyBoot cuts by 20k - changed CD driver from OAK 40k to BTC 21k and now loads in ME
ME still the best DOS with EasyBoot