[syslinux] "Boot error" message

[braiamserafim at terra.com.br]

 I'm using the formatting tool provided by manufacturer. I read the
flash in raw mode and I realized that fat entries are out of FAT
Directory Entries sectors. According to superblock the fat entries
can be written between 13rd and 28th sectors. But if I copy any file
into flash by FreeDOS, a FAT dir entry is created after the 41st
sector. Under Linux, all is written correctly.
 Are there any way to solve it?
 On Seg 11/01/10 15:05 , "H. Peter Anvin" hpa at zytor.com sent:
 On 01/11/2010 08:49 AM, braiamserafim at terra.com.br [1] wrote:
 >  Hi,
 >  I'm getting a "Boot error" message when the BIOS tries to boot a
SPI
 > flash disk. I installed the syslinux on SPI flash disk mounted as
a
 > block device. The flash was formatted as FAT12. The BIOS emulates
the
 > flash as floppy.
 >  I also tried to install the bootloader using a DOS version of
 > syslinux running on FreeDOS. If I use this way so the BIOS boots
 > correctly.
 >  Why am I getting that error message?
 Because the geometry that the BIOS uses isn't the same as the one
 written into the FAT12 superblock on the disk.  This is particularly
 important for floppy-emulation devices because there is no reliable
way
 to query the geometry of a floppy device.
 The reason the DOS installer works (it's probably actually the DOS
 FORMAT program) is because since it is running under FreeDOS, it's
using
 the BIOS to write the disk, and thus it is using the same geometry.
 -hpa
 -- 
 H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center
 I work for Intel.  I don't speak on their behalf.
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