[syslinux] Pxelinux/memdisk with XP "MS-DOS" boot disk

[Blaauw,Bernd B.]

the problem in the "XP dos-floppy" is the kernel that is used: Windows Millennium Edition 's diskette IO.SYS (msdos ver 8.00)

I have heared earlier about this "IO.sys + MEMDISK" bug, I think somewhere in the 911CD forums [ http://www.911cd.net/forums/ ]
too bad, since the kernel supports LFN, fat32 and has the size of old MSDOS kernels.

it SHOULD be possible to use FreeDOS by now.
however, it has another config.sys multimenu-style

a nice trick I'm using is bootdisk + syslinux -> load compressed imagefile using memdisk (2.88MB for example).
this should eliminate any "I have to use a 220KB io.sys because MS decided to include the bootlogo bitmap in my kernel" problem.
(same for emm386 for example).

Patrick, please see  
http://www.fdos.org/ripcord/beta9rc4/bugsolve/bootdisk.img

and test if you can use FreeDOS kernel by now for your unattended project.
this kernel.sys is a CVS release dated 22-12-2003 
I still have to test if I can install win98 with it (Bochs, Vmware).

be very afraid of the fdauto.bat I created :)

FreeDOS boots OK from a PXE server (I used the Windows TFTP server mentioned on HPA's site). VMware 4.1 now has PXE (boot-from-lan) support.

I can't use any Etherboot project stuff since it requires a tagged image.
..which can only be done under Linux.

I'm still searching for a DOS TFTP client btw. I just need to retrieve one file, so MS Client is a waste.
(boot from lan -> pxelinux -> dos bootimage -> tftp client -> download ISO to harddisk -> mount it with a DOS tool -> install FreeDOS).

Bernd Blaauw