Booting to EuroDos and PCCheck?

Message

EagleEye · #1 Post by **EagleEye** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 6:14 am

I saw a thread on here regarding the including of PC-Check by EuroSoft on the UBCD, but it's not being included because it's commercial software.

Well, what I'd like to do is make a custom launcher for that app (because we're properly licensed, and want to integrate it in to our own tech CD).

The problem is this: FDUBCD.igz and MSUBCD.igz both have these boot menus that load memory managers, making PC Check not work right.

PC Check itself comes as an IMA file (a standard bootable floppy) with "EuroDos" on it. I'd LIKE to boot directly to that, but it doesn't seem to want to.

I have tried various methods of getting it to boot properly to the image.

LABEL pccheck
MENU LABEL PC Check
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND initrd=/images/fdubcd.igz ubcdcmd=pccheck

This will allow it to load, but if I select any of the options, it loads memory managers... If I select "Clean", it just goes to a prompt, and that's it. This is using PC Check out of a folder under "DosApps", using startup.bat.

If I use the PCCHECK.IMA (or IMG), and use the following lines in my .CFG file:

LABEL pccheck
MENU LABEL PC Check
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND initrd=/images/pccheck.ima

It will either just sit there saying "Loading Boot Sector... booting..." or it will give me a screen full of garbage.

I've done a lot of research and reading on these forums regarding various issues like this, so I'll tell you now, the launcher is recognizing these IMA and IMG files as floppy disks.

Disk is floppy 0, 1440 K, C/H/S = 80/2/18, EDD off

I also tried making an ISO to boot to. I'm not sure what to try at this point, so any help would be appreciated.

Constance · #2 Post by **Constance** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 6:21 am

Did you try compressing the IMA/IMG file as a IGZ file (which I dunno exactly which compression format is ... probably GZip ) ?

EagleEye · #3 Post by **EagleEye** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 6:27 am

Some additional information...

I have set up my main.cfg menu with the following:

LABEL pccheck1
MENU LABEL PC Check (Using memdisk, boot to fd-dos)
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND initrd=/images/fdubcd.igz ubcdcmd=pccheck
LABEL pccheck1.2
MENU LABEL PC Check (Using memdisk, boot to ms-dos)
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND initrd=/images/msubcd.igz ubcdcmd=pccheck
LABEL pccheck2
MENU LABEL PC Check (Using memdisk, boot to disk image pccheck.ima)
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND initrd=/dosapps/pccheck/pccheck.ima
LABEL pccheck3
MENU LABEL PC Check (Using memdisk, boot to disk image pccheck.img)
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND initrd=/dosapps/pccheck/pccheck.img
LABEL pccheck4
MENU LABEL PC Check (Using memdisk, boot to disk image pccheck.iso)
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND initrd=/dosapps/pccheck/pccheck.iso
LABEL pccheck5
MENU LABEL PC Check (Using memdisk, boot to disk image pccheck.igz)
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND initrd=/dosapps/pccheck/pccheck.igz
LABEL pccheck6
MENU LABEL PC Check (Booting directly to pccheck.ima as kernel)
KERNEL /dosapps/pccheck/pccheck.ima
APPEND -
LABEL pccheck7
MENU LABEL PC Check (Booting directly to pccheck.img as kernel)
KERNEL /dosapps/pccheck/pccheck.img
APPEND -

For pccheck1 and pccheck1.2, it loads the memory managers which breaks the memory testing parts of pccheck.

For pccheck2 through pccheck5, it hangs on that "Loading Boot Sector" part.

Loading the ima or img files directly in to the kernel causes a scrambled garbage screen.

Constance · #4 Post by **Constance** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 6:37 am

BTW, can you please specify exactly which version of UBCD you are using ?

EagleEye · #5 Post by **EagleEye** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 7:32 am

Version 4.0.3 I believe... I only got it about a week ago.

EagleEye · #6 Post by **EagleEye** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 7:33 am

Constance wrote:Did you try compressing the IMA/IMG file as a IGZ file (which I dunno exactly which compression format is ... probably GZip ) ?

I doubt that would make a difference... but if it does, I'm willing to try it.

EasyBoot boots up to PC Check just fine using the .IMA file I'm using... so I know it's not a bad image.

#7 Post by **Victor Chew** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 6:58 am

which I dunno exactly which compression format is ... probably GZip

It's your standard 1.44 or 2.88MB floppy image compressed using GZip. We couldn't call it .img.gz because we have to stick to the 8.3 filename convention.

#8 Post by **Victor Chew** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 7:02 am

EagleEye, your best bet is to try the various parameters available to memdisk:

Code: Select all

LABEL pccheck 
MENU LABEL PC Check 
KERNEL memdisk 
APPEND initrd=/images/pccheck.ima raw

or:

Code: Select all

KERNEL memdisk 
APPEND initrd=/images/pccheck.ima bigraw

or:

Code: Select all

KERNEL memdisk 
APPEND initrd=/images/pccheck.ima safeint

silenoz · #9 Post by **silenoz** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:26 am

Hello all,

I've also been trying to add EuroDOS / PCCheck to the UBCD and I'm running into the same issue with memory managers in UBCD 4.1.1.

Here's how I currently have PCCheck running:

LABEL pccheck
MENU LABEL PC Check - DOS boot
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND initrd=/images/dosubcd.igz ubcdcmd=pccheck

Which allows the program to boot but not run its memory diagnostic utilities due to memory managers.

I noticed that the windows memory diagnostic image is loaded with the arguments ro bigraw. However I've yet to be able to make a bootable image of EuroDOS at all as of yet. Dropping the files into an .ima, .img, or .igz and attempting to boot from it simply results in the message "no system disk."

Does anyone have a solution for either of these boot methods?