[syslinux] Old Syslinux version 1.40

[Kevin Grant]

Hello there :)

I'm having some fun playing with a really old bootable CDROM image (seems to be based off a Slackware image originally) and trying to run it off a USB stick or HDD partition instead of CD, but it wasn't created as a hybrid image originally and it just won't play ball (yet).
The disk however contains a number of files in /boot which makes me suspect that it /could/ boot from a hard drive, if it were re-mastered with the right boot.catalog parameters. 
contents of /boot:boot.catalogboot.imgeltorito.booteltorito.imgideboot.imgrootdisk.imgscsiboot.img
It seems to be using floppy emulation mode, which doesnt help. Had it been created in no-emulation mode, it appears it should have been as simple as running isohybrid <name_of_image.iso> to convert it.
As it is, ISOHYBRID fails to convert it due to the invalid boot catalog parameters, and munging the script to disable the checks still only gets you as far as a message about a missing hybrid signature, so no dice.

I thought it may be possible to master a new ISO image, using the same file contents, but changing the boot parameters so that it supported hard disk mode, using one of the provided *.img files
I downloaded the source code from git, checked out tag 'syslinux-1.40' and hoped to compile it with NASM (on Ubuntu 18) but this too failed to make.
~/syslinux$ makenasm -f bin -dVERSION="'1.40'" -dDATE_STR="'0x627f7146'" -dHEXDATE="0x627f7146" -l ldlinux.lst -o ldlinux.bin ldlinux.asmldlinux.asm:363: error: program origin redefinedMakefile:49: recipe for target 'ldlinux.bin' failedmake: *** [ldlinux.bin] Error 1
Presumably the code would compile at some point, in order to create the original disc, maybe my NASM is too new and strict?

At this point I'm out of ideas what to try next, and open to suggestions..
here's a link to the ISO in question: https://archive.org/download/cobaltraqrestorecd/CobaltRaQ%20%28196-00102-01%29.iso
Thanks in advance for any help :)


Kevin Grant