Here is a hard one for you all : How to boot from a floppy image w/o drives

coolwaves · 12-15-2003, 07:05 PM

Well, this is th situation. I have a King embedded machine (it was announced in the for sale forum some time ago) it is an industrial panel PC w/o floppy nor Cd-Rom drive (I had to take out the HD in order to install an OS on it).

After weeks of research, I have found that the Mobo is from a TNb-5900 PII notebook (from Tatung) and I need one of the BIOS upgrades available to it. The problem is, the only way to upgrade the BIOS is with an special bootable floppy.

Now, the only way I see to boot it up from this floppy is to make an image of this floppy and have the machine mount it somehow at boot time. Any ideas?

PS:There is also no way of ataching a temporary CD-ROM nor floppy to it, and it would not boot from USB devices . I told it was a hard one

frodobaggins · 12-15-2003, 07:15 PM

use a spare hard drive

shakes · 12-15-2003, 07:16 PM

ummm ... how bout a compact flash with IDE adapter?

Angelica · 12-15-2003, 07:33 PM

First question is your special floppy actually special (i.e. not dos formated)

If so you could try this http://www.oldskool.org/pc/flopper/

I have never used it so can not say if it will work or not but it sounds like what you need.

If it is only a dos bootable disk then then set up another primary partition on your hard drive and set that partition as active and copy the files to that partition.

Hope this helps
Angelica

binary.h4x · 12-16-2003, 06:24 AM

boot from the network?

coolwaves · 12-16-2003, 10:25 AM

Thak you to all of you. I think flopper will be the answer. I cna't use a spare hard drive, as the disk is DOS formatted, but it does not boot to dos, this is, I can see the files in the floppy from command window, but it's not a DOS boot floppy. Flopper will do it, I think, I just hope that the BIOS Update program that is on that disk won't be hardwired to look for info in the floppy in a physical way...
Man, this will be dangerous... But, WTF if I was scary I woudn't be trying to put a PC inside my car

babas151 · 12-20-2003, 11:25 PM

mayb you could unplug your Hard drive and replace it with a cd drive. To boot from the flopy just use nero's flopy emulation software that whay you would boot just as if you were using a flopy . if theirs no way of connecting the cd drive then try to make a cd with the flopy emulation then copy all the files on the cd to your hard drive and try and see if the HD can emulate the floppy...

SjLucky · 12-21-2003, 01:29 AM

I got a great idea that will solve all your problems

GET A NEW MOBO

ok im sorry im trying very hard not to be a jackass but sometimes the cravings just overtake and it just pours out

none · 12-21-2003, 01:34 AM

Please don't post when drunk. Jackass is an accurate description.

Quote: Originally Posted by SjLucky

I got a great idea that will solve all your problems

GET A NEW MOBO

ok im sorry im trying very hard not to be a jackass but sometimes the cravings just overtake and it just pours out

frodobaggins · 12-21-2003, 11:18 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by none

Please don't post when drunk. Jackass is an accurate description.

We are used to him by now, he's our resident alkie

coolwaves · 12-22-2003, 07:01 AM

Well, tried Flopper with no luck, it needs to gather some information via an special boot floppy before working properly, and since this machine doesn't even have an FDD header, it's kinda impossible to do so. I tried to have it gather this info in my desktop, then moving the data to the Panel PC, but it didn't work. So, the question is open again: is there any kind of software emulator that would make the system boot from a floppy image stored on HD? You know, something like that Caldera-DOS trick that Partition Magic does when you want to change the system partition under WinXP....

PS: SjLucky: no, I'm not going to buy a new mobo just because this gives me some minor problems (This BIOS actualization would make my life quite easier, but I can live without it). Of course, this is unless you know of a good mobo, that can directly drive a 4 Channel LVDS Toshiba 10C306L LCD panel and that is pretty cheap. Also, I think that if each time you have a problem you just replace your hardware it will have two effects: 1. You will soon run out of money 2. You'll never learn how to solve that problem. That's all.

SjLucky · 12-22-2003, 01:14 PM

well slap the drive in as a primary in another pc
install your jazz and slap it back in

frodobaggins · 12-22-2003, 01:27 PM

All you have to do is copy the files over to a spare hard drive and make it bootable. Then stick in your spare.

coolwaves · 12-28-2003, 04:43 PM

Mmmmm... As it's a BIOS upgrade what I want to do with all this mess, it wouldn't help to put the hard drive in ohter computer and then booting from the BIOS upgrade disk. Trying to install the BIOS uprade program into a spare hard disk could be a solution, but as this disk is not a DOS boot disk (it's DOS formatted, but it does not boot to DOS but to some kind of bootable BIOS flash program) I don't know how to put the proper files in the first sector of the HD in order to make it all work... Any advice?

Axis_Inc636 · 03-11-2004, 04:43 PM

Install the drive as a seconday on a working PC, go to dos command prompt
enter "format {Drive letter} /s" this will format that drive and make it bootable. then take your floppy that has the upgrade software and put it in that computer then type "copy a:\*.* {drive letter}" that should copy the program, start up files and everything you need to do the BIOS upgrade. place it back in the pc that you are trying to do the upgrade in and boot it. if everything works like it should when it boots from the HD it will load your software.

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