Posted 22 hours ago
Good.
Since you are not (anymore) tight on space, personally I would try using a (second) copy of grub.exe, named (say) elgrub.exe with its internal (embedded) menu.lst modified with the grub4dos commands you now use.
This way you avoid the et.bat, the menu.lst/menu.new and the deleting/renaming of them.
If you want to keep just the grub.exe, I cannot see why you cannot point the -config-file in et.bat to a dedicated file (your menu.new) and leave the et.bat and menu.new alone.
Also worth a try (IMHO) is to use in et.bat directly the commands in -config-file parameters (instead of the external menu.lst), this usually works, but has to be seen if it works with your commands.
But (another possibility) why not making the superfloppy directly booting to grldr (again with the embedded menu.lst modified and renamed[1] to - say - elldr)?
This way you don't need to boot to dos to run grub.exe to have it reload dos.
About identifying the device (0xe0) there may be some (obscure) method peeking in grub4dos memory, but unofficially (0xe0) has been called "BIOS loaded CD device", so it makes sense:
http://reboot.pro/in...showtopic=17911
Wonko
[1] though officially frowned upon, it should be possible, or at least it was possible until a few versions ago, needs to be tested.
P.S. Also, something in COSMIAS may be useful?
http://reboot.pro/to...-to-g4d-images/
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deomsh' Reply
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About ET.BAT
I first started with A:\GRUB.EXE --config-file="map --floppies=2 ; map --mem (0xe0)26+17280 (fd0) ; map --hook ; root (fd0) ; chainloader /io.sys"
When more lines didn't work, I remembered the max number of chars is about 80. So I made other choices.
But according to the README_GRUB4DOS.txt this is the max in case of the INSTALL command, so maybe I should have used DEVICE command in CONFIG.SYS instead (4KB max, never tried).
I agree renaming is not desirable, I use ET.LST now with some tricks to 'activate' other lines in CONFIG.SYS/ AUTOEXEC.BAT - grubutil fat not needed anymore. Print-screens of Notepad++ are needed to see what I have made. works like a charm.
BTW changing to REM in AUTOEXEC.BAT is not needed, but first it didn't work with cat --locate=\x20 --replace=; number=1 /AUTOEXEC.BAT > nul it took me a while to find my error .
About grldr:
There are other possibilities, but my final goal is to have the Virtual Box 7 workaround. For many reasons I always in MS-DOS first, and start grub4dos manually from the DOS command-line if needed.
Sometimes I have to test an adjusted GRLDR (like yaya's test version with retval64 - grub4dos 2022-10-26 and later versions), but I only succeed installing grldr.mbr.
About (0xe0):
Thanks for confirmation. I did a quick search before on reboot.pro, but missed that part of the post. Afterwards I did a long search on (0xe0) and (hd96) but there is not much. I nowhere find something like my map --mem (0xe0)26+17280 (fd0) setup. Is it tried before and maybe 'lost' (i.e. only to get with the Wayback machine)?
About COSMIAS:
Interesting, but is it possible with a PBR too, or should I try with El Torito 0x4 ?
Postscript
I found ImDisk had problems to mount 3840K floppy at Windows' startup (3840K floppy is not in the specs of ImDisk too). Also I found ImDisk' startup mounting in the Registry only, so I had to change some keys to get rid of the old startup mountings.
I used following workaround with two cmd's + LNK's in StartUp (one cmd will be possible too):
Floppy_B: imdisk -a -f D:\3840F12B.IMG -b 0 -s 3932160 -o fd -m B:
ISO_F: imdisk -a -f D:\34560S36.ISO -b 53248 -s 35389440 -o hd -m F:
BTW with -o hd ImDisk will map the 34560K floppy part inside the ISO to a hard drive. So I can reactivate my physical floppy drive .
Unmounting with imdisk -D -m drive-letter: is handy too. Also if I mount/ unmount from context-menu I always have to deal with User Account Control, in case of cmd's not - but maybe unsafe.
P.S.S.
Just found out semicolon should be working in CONFIG.SYS only, it seems in AUTOEXEC.BAT REM is the only remark method. So I am on the road. Because GRUB.EXE is the first line in AUTOEXEC.BAT, others lines will not be executed.
I tested AUTOEXEC.BAT without the semicolons, looks good after booting to IO.SYS with grub4dos: