[syslinux] DOCMEMORY 2.0 (simmtester) and MEMDISK

[Phillip Remaker]

Like a lot of people, I am using SYSLINUX + MEMDISK to make a technician
universal boot disk on a USB key (I have done the same with ISOLINUX and
MEMDISK for a CD using Bart's method for bootable CDs)

I *LOVE* Syslinux and MEMDISK, and what I can do with floppy images!

I have a few problems that have cropped up, most notably the DOCMEMORY
program (www.simmstester.com) boots fing, but the system hangs when I start
the memory test (I suspect that since it is encapsulated in an emulation, it
blithlely overwrites important stuff).  I suspect this is likely a problem
with DocMemory, but I don't know how to troubleshoot it.  It runs off a
FreeDOS bootable disk, and is a free download.

I don't know how docmemory figures out where it shouldn't write, or what
mechanisms exist to communicate that information, but hopefull people on
this mailing list will 8-)

As other points of interest:  Windows 98 Gold and Windows ME boot disks
fail, but Windows 98 SE boot disk images work (go figure).

I've also managed to get Driveimager and Partition Magic to work by rolling
the two doot disks into a single 2.88mb image using Winimage (though memdisk
doesn't like the 1.5M floppy images that Winimage writes, it considers them
a hard drive image.

As an aside, and this is probably a FAQ... it looks like SYSLINUX won't boot
out of subdirectories.  True?  When I make a kernel name like
foo/wigdet.img, it can't find image foowidge.tim.  I imaging it hangs hard
to the 8.3 limits for maximum compatability 8-)

I'm still playing with this powerful tool.  Very nice.