Daniela's CD-ROM boot support filter - Version 1.0.2

           Daniela's CD-ROM boot support filter  - Version 1.0.2

           -----------------------------------------------------

 

NAME

     DaniBoot.FLT  -  CD-ROM boot support filter

 

 

SYNOPSIS

     Enhanced version of the IBM CD-ROM boot support filter cd_boot.flt.

 

 

DESCRIPTION

     DaniBoot.FLT is a filter driver which allows to boot OS/2 from a CD-ROM.

     The boot image may be split into two images on the CD-ROM medium to

     accomodate space requirements for BASEDEVs. These two images need to

     be physically adjacent on the medium! The first part of the images needs

     to be of standard floppy size (1.44MB or 2.88MB) or the BIOS might not

     accept the image as a bootable one.

 

 

COMMAND LINE OPTIONS

     This driver supports the following switches:

 

     /D:n     total number of 1.44MB pseudo-images comprising the boot image

 

     /N:name  the image name to search for in case of multiple boot images.

              <name> may contain any character except for white space. The

              length of name is 11 characters or less; excess characters are

              discarded.

 

     /H       hide all non-boot CD-ROM units

 

 

ENHANCEMENTS

     DaniBoot.FLT is enhanced over cd_boot.flt in many ways:

 

     1) The driver not only supports boot configurations /D:2 (single 2.88MB

        boot image) and /D:3 (split 2.88MB/1.44MB image). The value of <n> may

        be any number now which is checked for being larger than two (split

        image) or not (single image).

 

     2) The geometries of the boot image (parts) are no longer hard coded. The

        second part may be of virtually arbitrary size (up to 65535 sectors);

        the driver will read the actual geometry off the image itself.

 

     3) The driver no longer looks at the first CD-ROM unit only ("first" from

        ADD/FLT point of view), but scans all available CD-ROM units for

        presence of the CD-ROM boot medium. This prevents "OS/2 cannot operate

        your hard disk ..." messages in case of some hardware configurations.

 

     4) The driver is no longer restricted to El-Torito single boot images.

        If the driver encounters a multi-boot image (more precisely: more than

        one boot image of type 2 or 3 is listed in the boot catalog), it scans

        for the proper OS/2 boot image by a name check. The volume name at

        offset 2Bh in the BPB of the boot image needs to match the name given by

        the /N:name option or the default image name OS2_BOOT if none is given.

 

     5) The excessive delays at accessing the mapped boot image (A:) are gone.

        These delays were noticable both on real hardware and in particular on

        VirtualPC.

 

     6) The driver may optionally hide (by means of the /H option) other,

        non-boot CD-ROM units from the CD-ROM manager driver. This way the

        drive letter of the boot CD-ROM becomes "sticky". For example, if

        you have "RESERVEDRIVELETTER=Q" in CONFIG.SYS then the boot CD-ROM

        will be R: regardless of the CD-ROM unit used for booting.

 

     7) The presence of the floppy driver IBM*FLPY.ADD is no longer required.

 

 

AUTHOR

     Daniela Engert

 

     Internet: "Daniela Engert" <dani@ngrt.de>        (preferred)

     Fidonet: 2:2490/2575                          (no support here)

 

 

EPILOGUE

     Suggestions and bug-reports are always welcome. Well ... bug-reports

     are perhaps not *that* welcome ... ;)