[syslinux] Minor idea - "Press any key to boot within 5 second" style of thing...

[Nazo]

On 9/22/05, Murali Krishnan Ganapathy <gmurali at cs.uchicago.edu> wrote:
> It should be very easy to do this using COMBOOT. write a code called
> "ifthen.com" which takes three arguments
>
> (1) How long to wait (call it NSEC)
> (2) Image1 (THEN)
> (3) Image2 (ELSE)
>
> The code prints "Press any key in NSEC seconds to continue", and waits
> for NSEC seconds.
> If within this duration a key was pressed then you execute THEN image
> otherwise you execute ELSE image.
>
> Once this is done, make "ifthen.com" as the default image like this
>
> default ifthen
>
> label ifthen
>   kernel ifthen.com
>   append 10 "default" "localboot -1"
>
> Thats all there is to it! At boot time if user presses a key in NSEC
> seconds then "default" is executed else "localboot -1" is executed. If
> you are particular about booting from the hard disk, replace "localboot
> -1" with "chain.c32 hda 0" (or something similar).
>
> You can use some of the code in the advanced menu, as a starting point,
> for the wait for NSEC seconds part.
>
> - Murali
>
> Nazo wrote:
> > I like how some cds, such as the windows installer discs will skip
> > booting from the disc if you accidentally left the drive because they
> > require you to hit a key to make them actually boot from the disc.
> > I've kind of tried to emulate this behavior using chain.c32, but, it
> > requires me to specify which harddrive, and I'd rather see an
> > independant setup.  I've tried localboot -1, but, it seems it's not
> > supported by all BIOSes (including that of my previous system --
> > haven't tested my current one.)
> >
> > Of course, if such a thing were possible, it'd need to be an optional
> > thing and with configurable time (I don't like the default short
> > periods because sometimes it takes that long for the display and
> > monitor to completely initialize and it's already moved on by the time
> > you could have seen the message.)
> >
> > Anyway, just a thought.  And if there's already some way to do this
> > that's independant of crappy bioses or harddrives in different
> > locations, it'd be great to know.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > SYSLINUX mailing list
> > Submissions to SYSLINUX at zytor.com
> > Unsubscribe or set options at:
> > http://www.zytor.com/mailman/listinfo/syslinux
> > Please do not send private replies to mailing list traffic.
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> SYSLINUX mailing list
> Submissions to SYSLINUX at zytor.com
> Unsubscribe or set options at:
> http://www.zytor.com/mailman/listinfo/syslinux
> Please do not send private replies to mailing list traffic.
>
>
I'll be perfectly honest.  If I could do that, I wouldn't have send an
e-mail with a suggestion, I'd have sent one with an attachment.  d-: