[syslinux] makebootfat: an utility to create bootable USB disks
H. Peter Anvin
hpa at zytor.com
Wed Feb 23 13:07:33 PST 2005
Andrea Mazzoleni wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 15:47:46 +0100, Paolo Salvan
> <paolo.salvan at xvision.it> wrote:
>
>>it isn't clear to me instead how can it be compatible with
>>floppy also, as AFAIK it has a different way to handle boot sector and
>>boot process...
>
> I'm using a MBR sector which pretend to be also a FAT boot sector. The
> two sector formats are not incompatible. You can put a FAT descriptor
> and a partition table in the same sector because they are placed in
> different ranges.
>
> So an USB-FDD BIOS can see a FAT boot sector and an USB-HDD can see a
> MBR with a partition table.
>
> For example in Linux the resulting device can be mounted as /dev/sda
> and also as /dev/sda1.
>
Interesting approach. The big problem is that with a FAT32 superblock
and a partition table, there is very little space left. I'd be
interested in looking at your code.
-hpa
More information about the Syslinux
mailing list