#12 Create an MS-DOS bootable stick

[Anonymous]

Hi,

While looking around for a solution on my problem, I was wondering if anyone got a similar need.

I could create a bootable USB stick running Freedos, but I'm looking to do a similar procedure with MS-DOS. There is plenty of information on the web to produce small size usb stick (1.44M, 2.88M), but only a couple of web page about large DOS configuration.

I wonder if anyone is able to do such USB stick running MS-DOS.

For your reference, this web page work well for large filesystem, but produce a freedos version.

http://www.aselabs.com/articles.php?id=243

Thank for any input

[Henrik Carlqvist]

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I haven't tried to boot MS-DOS from a USB stick myself, but if you were able to boot freedos following those instructions and if your version of MS-DOS supports USB I think that it would work if you do the following steps:

Step 1, use GNU parted to create your FAT32 partition and file system:
parted /dev/sda mklabel msdos
parted /dev/sda mkpart primary fat32 0 200
parted /dev/sda mkfs 1 fat32
parted /dev/sda set 1 boot on
parted /dev/sda print

Step 2, write the MBR:
ms-sys -w /dev/sda

Step 3, write the FAT32 partition boot record:
ms-sys -w /dev/sda1

Step 4, copy system files:
mkdir /tmp/mnt
mount /dev/sda1 /tmp/mnt
cp command.com /tmp/mnt
cp io.sys /tmp/mnt
cp msdos.sys /tmp/mnt
umount /tmp/mnt

The above instructions assume that your USB stick is named /dev/sda, maybe you will have to replace that device name with the name of your stick.

regards Henrik

[Nobody/Anonymous]

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I tried, and it didn't work
I also did what is recommended by cfdisk when creating DOS 6.x partition. No luck
I also tried a different USB key without success

[Henrik Carlqvist]

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If those steps were not enough it might help to add one more step:

Step 3b, write partition info and drive id to partition:
ms-sys -p /dev/sda1

The -p switch requires a 2.4 kernel to work reliable. You chould both use an ms-sys compiled on a system running a 2.4 kernel and you should run that ms-sys on a 2.4 linux kernel system.

If it still doesn't help, do you get any error messages?

regards Henrik