Amithlon Install to FreeDOS partition without Floppy Drive?

[XDelusion]

I was trying to follow this guide:

http://www.sci.fi/~vjouppi/amithlon/

And on it it says that you need to boot off the boot disk (ide.zip) in order to go though the motions.

The problem is that I do not have a floppy drive, and need to burn that bootable floppy image as a CD apparently, but Nero does not support the BIN disk image format, only IMG. So...

...my question, is there a way to get Amithlon on there without a floppy drive?

[XDelusion]

I am in an Amiga forum right?

[seer]

Hmm.. Nero does "support" the bin format.. Just select the image form the recorder / burn image.. If Nero complains about the default settings, select the other "block size".. Should work..

Failing that, try WinISO to convert the Bin to ISO..

No idea about the Amithlon question tho, don't have it near me..

[XDelusion]

No, not BIN as in CD image, it is BIN as in floppy image, its the other standard format aside of the IMG format.

Perhaps there is a way to mount a viurtual floppy drive in winblows XP or DOS?

[Ilwrath]

The problem is that I do not have a floppy drive, and need to burn that bootable floppy image as a CD apparently, but Nero does not support the BIN disk image format, only IMG. So...

When you go to burn the CD in Nero... If you start from Data CD (Boot) option, you can specify a disk IMG that will be installed on the CD as an emulated boot floppy image.

I'm assuming that is what you are wanting to do, correct?  Only you don't have a .IMG, you have a .BIN.  First off...  Aren't these files the same?  (Just two different extensions for what is essentially a plain dump of a floppy?)  If not, surely you can convert the .BIN to a .IMG for this use?  And, even if not, surely you can borrow a PC with a floppy drive, and write the .BIN to a disk, and then image the disk back as an .IMG?  Wouldn't this solve the problem?

[Jope]

Hi, glad to hear someone's still using my instructions.. :-D

Use a CD-RW disc when you experiment with this.. Also if you do it this way, you'll most likely need to do it manually, you can also try automatic if you want to devote the entire HD for Amithlon.. Two CD drives doesn't hurt either.

Just try and import the bin image to Nero, it's a 1:1 image of a floppy disk. Burn the bootable CD with floppy disk emulation. (use the defaults)

If you have two CD drives, then you should leave the first one empty and insert your new bootable disc in the second drive. (the driver finds them in the order first = master, second = slave)

Once the installer boots, you can insert the Amithlon disc in the first drive and start installing.

Good luck! You can email me, pmail me or ask for more instructions in this thread..

[XDelusion]

Awsome, nice to meet you, thankx for this guide, can't wait to get it working.


Ok, here's the deal, I am on XP, but have a 16Gb partition free.

I would like to use the latest FreeDOS, so I installed FreeDOS to a 1Gb partition which is known as C: (winblows XP sees it as D:).

I then burnt the BIN file in Nero to CD, and the CD booted perfectly!

I then chose manual, chose to add another Primary partition, and changed that partition into a 118 Amithlong partition, at which point it became C: and C: became D:, so I swapped them back so that my FreeDOS partition would be C: again.

I then exited, and rebooted, I then tried to acess the C: drive to copy the files from the Amithlon CD, which were in the ISOLinux folder and not Syslinux.
 Anyhow, C: was suddenly no longer a valid drive.
=========
I then decided to can the 1Gb for FreeDOS and just install the FreeDOS from your CD instead, and follow your manual instructions.

So I do pretty much everything above, but this time, I can not copy the FreeDOS kernal to the C: drive as it can not be found. So now C: is not bootable.
--------------

I then dug out another computer, tried the Auto install, it worked great, copied my files to C: from Amithlon's ISOLINUX directory, rebooted, and it got to some FrameBugger Not Found errors and never booted Amithlon.

[Jope]

What filesystem did you format the freedos partition with? Make sure it's FAT16/FAT32.. You probably don't even need 1GB - DOS is quite a small operating system. :-)

Also: I hope your disk isn't a dynamic disk.. DOS probably doesn't know what to do with that either.

[XDelusion]

Ya, it was fat 32, stange thing though...

...when I popped your Amothlon prep CD into my other puter, and did the auto set up, it formatted the boot sector to Fat 12.

I read Bernie's instructions for booting up Amithlon in DOS, and that brought me to a black screen.


 So what is the extra Amithlon partition for? I take it you are supposed to boot off the Amithlon disk image, then you use the extra partitions as normal hard drives?

[Jope]

The special Amithlon partition is the Amithlon virtual hard drive.. Once you have the system set up, you should switch to the "small" initrd and only see your virtual hd's contents.

My installer formats boot as fat12 because it's so small.

There's something happening here that I don't understand.. Why doesn't freedos see the partition you made for it..