[syslinux] memdisk boot failure

[H. Peter Anvin]

Wagner Ferenc wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm trying to boot Feature Tool 2.08 (free download from
> http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm) from a pen drive
> via memdisk.  QEMU can boot the pen drive all right, my ThinkPad
> can't:
> 
> Loading ftool208.img.........................ready.
> MEMDISK 3.53 2007-11-17  Copyright 2001-2007 H. Peter Anvin
> e820: 0000000000000000 000000000009f000 1
> e820: 000000000009f000 0000000000001000 2
> e820: 00000000000dc000 0000000000024000 2
> e820: 0000000000100000 000000001f5e0000 1
> e820: 000000001f6e0000 0000000000017000 3
> e820: 000000001f6f7000 0000000000002000 4
> e820: 000000001f700000 0000000000800000 2
> e820: 000000001ff00000 0000000000100000 2
> e820: 00000000ff800000 0000000000400000 2
> e820: 00000000ffc00000 0000000000400000 2
> Ramdisk at 0x1f578000, length 0x00168000
> command line: initrd=ftool208.img BOOT_IMAGE=memdisk
> Disk is floppy 0, 1440 K, C/H/S = 80/2/18, EDD off
> Total size needed = 2356 bytes, allocating 3K
> Old dos memory at 0x9f000 (map says 0x9f000), loading at 0x9e400
> 1588: 0xffff  15E801: 0x3c00 0x1e57
> INT 13 08: Success, count = 0, BPT = 0000:0000
> old: int13 = f00067c1  int15 = f00067c6
> new: int13 = 9e40000a  int15 = 9e40037c
> Loading boot sector... booting...
> Starting PC DOS...
> 
> 
> And the cursor sits here blinking until I press Ctrl-Alt-Del.
> I tried version 3.08 and 3.54-pre1 with the same result.  raw, bigraw,
> safeint or edd didn't help either.  What should I try now?

Tricky.  It works on both my test machine, including the Thinkpad T60.

Does booting other disk images on the problematic system work?

One almost end up having to put tracers in the memdisk code itself to 
get a clue where it's hanging...

	-hpa