[syslinux] Any way to boot a CD if no BIOS support & CD-ROM is not 100% standard?

[Geert Stappers]

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On Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 12:24:05PM -0600, Nazo wrote:
> On 11/19/05, Geert Stappers <stappers at stappers.nl> wrote:
 <snip/>
> > AFAICT is a laptop with an add-on CD-ROM drive
> > but no BIOS support to boot from that drive.
> >
> >
> > The most clean solution would be updating the BIOS.
> > Contact the manufactor for detailed information.
> >
> > I have no clue how much they will charge for it.
> >
> Upgrade the BIOS?  Are you kidding me? 

Yes, I'm serious.
The thing people may laugh about, is that I spend time on it.

I believe that talking with eachother is a good thing.
(ignoring a community member is surely not)

> We're not talking a simple
> flash here, you'd have to REPLACE the BIOS.  This is a ~1995 system,
> not a 2000+ one...  It just simply lacks the capability and if it can
> get it via a flash, I realy seriously doubt they ever would have made
> one for such a system anyway, and they sure as heck aren't going to
> for one little ordinary user rather than some business running
> thousands of the things or something.  Seriously though, I really
> doubt Toshiba supports a laptop they made a decade ago.  Last I
> checked they showed no sign of this anyway that I've been able to
> find.  I can't blame them, I wouldn't expect anyone to.  If someone
> asked me to support something I did for them ten years ago, I'd just
> laugh at them.  It's not a question of money because I'm not BIll
> Gates, so I don't have enough money to make it feasible for them to
> try to rig up some kind of bios upgrade for me.

All true. And what about another point of view?

 * Yeah, the BIOS is what makes the CD-ROM drive a bootable device.

 * It is indeed my laptop, but the lack of information renders it
 into a thing that is owned by the manufactor.

 * Mmm, I begin to understand why I was ignore at other forums.


> > What about booting from floppy?
> >
> 
> Now, floppy booting works.  That's what I was saying earlier.  I had
> hoped I could figure out how to get SBM to boot the CD-ROM and I
> planned to use it via floppy.  My intention is to, once I get
> something that works, include a disk image on the restore CD so that
> it can be written to floppy.  My intention is to not rely on a floppy
> disk to last as long as a CDR for the person I'm selling this system
> to later.  (Floppies have the annoying tendency to die in a matter of
> weeks in some bad cases, years in the best cases.  Whereas CDRs, if
> you take care of them, theoretically promise up to 10 years. 
> Theoretically...)

Those are problems, try thinking in solutions.

* Document how to reproduce floppy from source.

* Include the raw floppy image on the CD.


> Right now the only solution I've found is directly booting.  Thing is,
> the kernel+initrd for anything I wish to boot MUST fit on the floppy,
> and I have to implement such a solution on a case by case basis, and
> there were one or two bootable CDs that I thought might benefit that
> person, not just the restoration disc I'm planning to rig up.


Why a kernel+initrd when all what is needed is code to boot from CD-ROM?
IIRC does have the FreeDOS project such technique.


GSt
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