[syslinux] MSDOS not working: problem Solved

[H. Peter Anvin]

G. Murali Krishnan wrote:
> 
> In short: Is it possible to have such a feature in some future version?
>           May be someimage like memdisk can do this?
>           If not is there any other way I can achieve the same effect.
> 

Probably not.  It would entail writing to the hard disk (since that's 
the only possible storage medium) which seems at best inappropriate for 
a CD.

You could theoretically do something like that by putting the disk 
access inside a COMBOOT/COM32 binary, but that would have to include the 
whole filesystem.

Of course, for *special tasks*, you might have a lot easier job.  For 
example, in your install disk example, if you know none of your users is 
going to have nonstandard partitioning (or if you're going to 
repartition the disk anyway), you can usually use the sectors on the 
hard disk immediately after the MBR.  The first partition traditionally 
starts at the beginning of the second track, even though there is no 
requirement for partitions to be such aligned.  This means some number 
of sectors are left unused.  These can be accessed with BIOS call INT 
13h from a COMBOOT/COM32 binary, which can be used to control ISOLINUX.

This obviously takes some hacking, but it's doable.

	-hpa