Re: [Etherboot-developers] Help on Booting WinME DOS

[Anselm M. H. <ans...@gm...>]

> Hi,
> 
> I experience problem of booting WinME DOS as its IO.SYS 
> loading HIMEM.SYS automatically. This conflicts with the 
> initial ramdisk installed at or above 1M in High Memory 
> Area.

In former DOS versions, there was a switch to himem.sys called /testmem:off.
IIRC, himem.sys is loaded automagically always _after_ config.sys if it had
not been specified. I have no mileage on WinME, but I believe on Win98 you
could simply enter
DEVICE=C:\windows\himem.sys /testmem:off
and it did exactly this.
This way you could avoid your RAM  be "checked", which should preserve the
ramdisk.
 
> If we could install the initial ramdisk in Low Memory Area, 
> may be we can withstand the automatic testing of High 
> Memory Area by the HIMEM.SYS loaded up by IO.SYS.
Possible in theory.  The problem I see is that MS-DOS uses the Lowmem area
without asking, so it could load e.g. command.com right there and you couldn't
even say "zap" before your virtual disk is nuked.
 
> So is it possible to install the initial ramdisk in the 
> first 640K of the Low Memory Area?

If you like, read the documentation about the NBI format, shipped along with
etherboot.
 
Anselm Martin Hoffmeister <an...@ho...>

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