DOS ain't dead

Well, I tired multiple versions of 16-bit FreeDOS kernels on Book8088 2.0, but they all get stuck at InitDisk function. It seems that InitDisk has problem with CF2IDE and detects the wrong disk parameters.

It came preinstalled with MS-DOS 6.22 and that works ok. I just wanted to put something lighter like a slimmer version of FreeDOS 1.3 or SvarDOS.

Also, if someone knows: where should I report the bug so FreeDOS kernel people see it?

> Well, I tired multiple versions of 16-bit FreeDOS kernels on Book8088 2.0,

Cool! Sounds like a DOS developer's dream device.

> but they all get stuck at InitDisk function. It seems that
> InitDisk has problem with CF2IDE and detects the wrong disk parameters.
>
> It came preinstalled with MS-DOS 6.22 and that works ok. I just wanted to
> put something lighter like a slimmer version of FreeDOS 1.3 or SvarDOS.

Lighter than MS-DOS 6.22?? Not sure that's possible, but I don't know what you mean.

As an aside, how are you supposed to get files onto the device? A CF card reader on your main PC? Or does "USB (U disk only)FAT16" mean the BIOS can somehow handle mounting a jump drive?

> Also, if someone knows: where should I report the bug so FreeDOS kernel
> people see it?

Probably SourceForge Bug Tracker or freedos-kernel mailing list.

> > Also, if someone knows: where should I report the bug so FreeDOS kernel
> > people see it?
>
> Probably SourceForge Bug
> Tracker or
> freedos-kernel
> mailing list.

I disagree, I would recommend https://github.com/fdos/kernel - It's what I use.

---
l

> Well, I tired multiple versions of 16-bit FreeDOS kernels on
> Book8088
> 2.0, but they all get stuck at InitDisk function.

An interesting and actually occuring reason for FreeDOS getting stuck at initdisk is that when you are using a kernel without FAT32 support (8086-compatible kernels may be compiled without that by default!) on a disk which only has FAT32 partitions.

In that case, the kernel will fail to find a suitable partition and will proceed to attempt to load config sys from A: instead, which can fail without showing an error message. So it will look exactly as if initdisk got stuck.

---
FreeDOS / DOSEMU2 / ...

> An interesting and actually occuring reason for FreeDOS getting stuck at
> initdisk is that when you are using a kernel without FAT32 support
> (8086-compatible kernels may be compiled without that by default!) on a
> disk which only has FAT32 partitions.

But it ships MS-DOS 6.22 on a 512 MB Compact Flash card, and that OS didn't support FAT32. (Granted, I forget what the smallest possible FAT32 partition size is.)

I guess I'm a masochist (or genius ... or easily amused) for loving the 8086 and DOS. This actually sounds great, but even having a valid MS-DOS license personally (which doesn't excuse them shipping it pre-installed), I think it's dumb to prefer that over FreeDOS.

> Lighter than MS-DOS 6.22?? Not sure that's possible, but I don't know what
> you mean.
>

Not full blown MS-DOS 6.22 installation. It's bloated. MS-DOS 5.0 was much lighter.

I think SvarDOS also uses a minified fork of FreeCOM so that should also help to minimize used memory, too.

> As an aside, how are you supposed to get files onto the device? A CF card
> reader on your main PC? Or does "USB (U disk only)FAT16" mean the BIOS can
> somehow handle mounting a jump drive?

I don't currently have a card reader (I had a few, but they broke - out of neglect I guess), so I'm using CF2IDE via ATA2USB. :D And it works, believe it or not (both on Windows and Linux).

As far as BIOS is concerned it uses skiselev's 8088_bios which supports XTIDE extensions (including the boot from CF cards).

> Probably SourceForge Bug
> Tracker or
> freedos-kernel
> mailing list.

Thanks. :)

>
> An interesting and actually occuring reason for FreeDOS getting stuck at
> initdisk is that when you are using a kernel without FAT32 support
> (8086-compatible kernels may be compiled without that by default!) on a
> disk which only has FAT32 partitions.
>
> In that case, the kernel will fail to find a suitable partition and will
> proceed to attempt to load config sys from A: instead, which can fail
> without showing an error message. So it will look exactly as if initdisk
> got stuck.

It shouldn't be the case. I tried multiple kernels with or without FAT32 support. Also, I'm not sure what was the original formatting, but I also tried FAT16 with only a system transfered with sys.com. I got the same results.

And the kernel actually recognizes the partition, but doesn't get CHS parameters right as it gets confused somewhere in the process. Than it gets stuck there.

Could be some weird CF geometry, sometimes it mismatched when using different connections for CF like various adapters. Also it might installed MBR for LBA? Where did you SYS your drive? Inside BOOK or on other PC? It would be better to do it on BOOK, boot FD from some other media and prepare CF there...

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> Could be some weird CF geometry, sometimes it mismatched when using
> different connections for CF like various adapters.

I also think this could be the case.

> Also it might installed MBR for LBA? Where did you SYS your drive? Inside BOOK or on other PC?

I tried it on the Book. I also tried it from DOSBOX-X by mounting a raw drive from within it on Linux. But results were similar.

> It would be better to do it on BOOK, boot FD from some other media and
> prepare CF there...

Not much choice here. It does have an external 8-bit ISA extension board, but I don't have any floppy controllers to plug in it. And I don't know if it can boot from it, even if I had one.

>
> Not much choice here. It does have an external 8-bit ISA extension board,
> but I don't have any floppy controllers to plug in it. And I don't know if
> it can boot from it, even if I had one.

According to post from VCF this should be possible:

> For general info about the gotek I recommend the FlashFloppy wiki since
> you'd be flashing that anyway as first thing. Then you just need a ISA
> floppy controller like one of those common super I/IO cards and use that
> with the gotek. Since there is XT-IDE on the Book8088 you need to press
> A to boot into floppy when that menu appears on top of the screen

This came from this very interesting topic on Book8088 I'm currently reading: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/book-8088-discovery-and-modification-thread.1245155/

More interesting stuff. This BIOS_8088 fork supports floppy emulation from the image included on USB thumb drive:

https://github.com/jinshin/8088_bios/releases/tag/v1.0.5

Yeah, this device has an USB plug. Although I think it is implemented via ISA2USB, so it should be slow.

> Not full blown MS-DOS 6.22 installation. It's bloated. MS-DOS 5.0 was much
> lighter.
>
> I think SvarDOS also uses a minified fork of FreeCOM so that should also
> help to minimize used memory, too.

Correction: SvarDOS SvarCOM was developed from scratch and modeled after MS-DOS 5.x/6.x command.com. A few more details are on http://www.svardos.org/svarcom/

---
Forum admin

I read that Book has USB port. Can it boot from USB flash drive?

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> Correction: SvarDOS SvarCOM was developed from scratch and modeled after
> MS-DOS 5.x/6.x command.com. A few more details are on
> http://www.svardos.org/svarcom/

Oh, ok. Thank you for correction.

> I read that Book has USB port. Can it boot from USB flash drive?

The BIOS is BIOS_8088 from Sergey Kiselev with XTIDE extension. That should only support IDE drives and CF cards.

I'll test it out anyway, but I don't hope for much.

> Well, I tired multiple versions of 16-bit FreeDOS kernels on
> Book8088
> 2.0, but they all get stuck at InitDisk function. It seems that
> InitDisk has problem with CF2IDE and detects the wrong disk parameters.

Which kernel revisions exactly did you test? Can you try a current build like the one available at https://github.com/FDOS/kernel/actions/runs/7281511383?

Did you sys the FreeDOS kernel onto the working MS-DOS filesystem, or did you create a new partition / filesystem with the tools provided by FreeDOS? If the latter is the case, please try installing the kernel onto the working MS-DOS filesystem and test if the kernel boots from it.

For security I read german WIKI about CF and it says (as assumed) that CF is simply spoken an IDE HD with a little different connections than the old IDE HDs. Those old and small HDs often had strange CHS configurations (may have been overtaken by CF).
As pictures often make things easier to understand, could you take a picture that shows the kernel error messages. I am sure it will help Bernd Böckmann too.

If anyone's interested in a hands-on review where they discuss some of these questions (and more):

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/going-deep...8-the-brand-new-laptop-that-runs-like-its-1981/

(Amusing title for the article....)

- Doug B.

> Which kernel revisions exactly did you test? Can you try a current build
> like the one available at
> https://github.com/FDOS/kernel/actions/runs/7281511383?
>

2039-2043.

I also tried that one. It gives a similar error:




> Did you sys the FreeDOS kernel onto the working MS-DOS filesystem, or did
> you create a new partition / filesystem with the tools provided by FreeDOS?
> If the latter is the case, please try installing the kernel onto the
> working MS-DOS filesystem and test if the kernel boots from it.

Onto a working MS-DOS system.

In case you can't see it from the screenshot, I transcribed the last two lines:

WARNING: using suspect partition Pri:1 FS 06: with calculated values 988-1-63 instead of 61-254-63
C: HD1, Pri[1], CHS = 0-1-1, start= 0 MB, size = 486 MB

> For security I read german WIKI about CF and it says (as assumed) that CF
> is simply spoken an IDE HD with a little different connections than the old
> IDE HDs. Those old and small HDs often had strange CHS configurations (may
> have been overtaken by CF).
> As pictures often make things easier to understand, could you take a
> picture that shows the kernel error messages. I am sure it will help Bernd
> Böckmann too.

Oh, you are here too. :) I just responded to you at the SourceForge Bug report few hours ago.

Sure, no problem. Just posted the pic and the transcription.

> WARNING: using suspect partition Pri:1 FS 06: with calculated values
> 988-1-63 instead of 61-254-63
> C: HD1, Pri[1], CHS = 0-1-1, start= 0 MB, size = 486 MB

Hm, looks like typical mismatch when disk is partitioned and formatted with different CHS than readed later...

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> > WARNING: using suspect partition Pri:1 FS 06: with calculated
> values
> > 988-1-63 instead of 61-254-63
> > C: HD1, Pri[1], CHS = 0-1-1, start= 0 MB, size = 486 MB
>
> Hm, looks like typical mismatch when disk is partitioned and formatted with
> different CHS than readed later...

I have a CF card and will try to make it bootable on a 2005 laptop tomorrow.

i read the report about this laptop and noticed that a picture with another OS on it. So it should be possible anyhow although an it was reported that the usb stick cannot boot but only copy files. Interesting challenge.

> > WARNING: using suspect partition Pri:1 FS 06: with calculated
> values
> > 988-1-63 instead of 61-254-63
> > C: HD1, Pri[1], CHS = 0-1-1, start= 0 MB, size = 486 MB
>
> Hm, looks like typical mismatch when disk is partitioned and formatted with
> different CHS than readed later...

Yes, deriving from the values in the screenshot, the CHS geometry under FreeDOS is detected as 16 heads, while it was formatted with a head count of of 255.

If the CF as a whole is less than 528 MB in size, 255 heads seems rather high, and 16 heads as reported by the XT-IDE BIOS is the "standard" one for such a disk size.

@bocke If you are able to write disk images to the CF card, you may try the following image with an installed SvarDOS system (with FreeDOS kernel). Its disk geometry is 995/16/63 (489 MiB) 987/16/63 (487 MB), which should be in accordance of what XT-IDE thinks about the CF card, despite being a little bit smaller than your card. You have to unzip the image.

https://nextcloud.iww.rwth-aachen.de/index.php/s/EBZ6zHE49Z9AGo6
https://nextcloud.iww.rwth-aachen.de/index.php/s/jBtGQPPb7keQoCc

> @bocke If you are able to write disk images to the CF card, you may try the
> following image with an installed SvarDOS system (with FreeDOS kernel). Its
> disk geometry is 995/16/63 (489 MiB) 987/16/63 (487 MB), which
> should be in accordance of what XT-IDE thinks about the CF card, despite
> being a little bit smaller than your card. You have to unzip the image.
>
> https://nextcloud.iww.rwth-aachen.de/index.php/s/EBZ6zHE49Z9AGo6
> https://nextcloud.iww.rwth-aachen.de/index.php/s/jBtGQPPb7keQoCc

It prints out only:
" -Initdisk " and then goes onto to show this blinking light show:



I found some anonymous file host to upload a video of a boot:
https://ufile.io/0ivj391d

This is the output (from Linux) of fdisk -l on both the file you sent me and SD card it was written to:

$ fdisk -l drive_0.img
Disk drive_0.img: 485,79 MiB, 509386752 bytes, 994896 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device       Boot Start    End Sectors   Size Id Type
drive_0.img1 *       63 993887  993825 485,3M  6 FAT16

$ fdisk -l /dev/sdd

Disk /dev/sdd: 488,74 MiB, 512483328 bytes, 1000944 sectors
Disk model: h 8.0.0         
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device     Boot Start    End Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sdd1  *       63 993887  993825 485,3M  6 FAT16

So, it seems that the image was written successfully.

> @bocke If you are able to write disk images to the CF card, you may try the
> following image with an installed SvarDOS system (with FreeDOS kernel). Its
> disk geometry is 995/16/63 (489 MiB) 987/16/63 (487 MB), which
> should be in accordance of what XT-IDE thinks about the CF card, despite
> being a little bit smaller than your card. You have to unzip the image.
>
> https://nextcloud.iww.rwth-aachen.de/index.php/s/EBZ6zHE49Z9AGo6
> https://nextcloud.iww.rwth-aachen.de/index.php/s/jBtGQPPb7keQoCc

drive_0.img seems to be ok too. It boots fine in Qemu:


But, it doesn't work on the machine when written to CF card.

> i read the report about this laptop and noticed that a picture with another
> OS on it. So it should be possible anyhow although an it was reported that
> the usb stick cannot boot but only copy files. Interesting challenge.

What other OS? I'm curious. ELKS should work. At least in the latest release, as they ironed out some Book8088 specific bugs recently. I also saw a Youtube video of it running Minix 1.7.5.

> > i read the report about this laptop and noticed that a picture with
> another
> > OS on it. So it should be possible anyhow although an it was reported
> that
> > the usb stick cannot boot but only copy files. Interesting challenge.
>
> What other OS? I'm curious.
> ELKS should work. At least in
> the latest release, as they ironed out some Book8088 specific bugs
> recently. I also saw a
> Youtube video of it running Minix 1.7.5.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/going-deep...8-the-brand-new-laptop-that-runs-like-its-1981/
5th big picture, it shows PC-DOS version 7, revision 1.

I just ran some tests with my old Kingston 512 MB compact flash connected via USB and three different adapters with an old DOS laptop from 2005.
The result was interesting:
a) with hama USB 2.0 Card Reader 19 in 1 the CF was NOT found at all, not by fdisk and not by ranish partition manager,
b) with Conrad Electronic Model CP440 it was found, fdisk and ranish partition manager worked - but at the end the results were NOT written on the CF (write protection), after a reboot there was NOTHING,
c) with an old Skymaster USB 2.0 Multi Card Reader read and write worked, but after running fdisk and a reboot format had problems. Then I ran ranish partition manager delivered with FDT23xx, it was able to format the CF with it, but it made a mismatch.
Then I formatted it again with format - and this time it worked! I was able to run sys - and the kernel and command.com was on it! But with the actual configuration I was unable to test if it really boots.
So installing FD on to a new 512 MB CF card is a thing of good luck.

The article above mentioned that you can buy the laptop with and without support for diskettes etc. They say that the USB stick is not bootable, so I am still astonished how you made it to make MS-DOS work again after the FD kernel did not run through. Del kernel.sys should not work from this position - only if you connect the CF with another machine.
One more thing: MS-DOS has several basic files: io.sys, msdos.sys, dblspace.bin and command.com. Some of these files are hidden! This may cause problems too.

So my proposal would be: If you have one more empty 512 MB CF card, (I just looked, the prices vary from 14 Euro till 225 Euro, crazy), check if your card reader supports read/write from DOS, if yes, try to format it from an external machine, (dont forget Active Partition), run sys and test this CF.

> I am still astonished how you made it to make MS-DOS work again after the
> FD kernel did not run through. Del kernel.sys should not work from this
> position - only if you connect the CF with another machine.


Easy. I just made a backup with ddrescue on my Linux machine. Similar to:

ddrescue /dev/sdd book8088-bak.img

Than I just return a backup to the CF card with "dd". Something like:

dd if=book8088-bak.img /dev/sdd

And I also have several CF cards. I wouldn't play with the only working CF card without having any spares.


> So my proposal would be: If you have one more empty 512 MB CF card, (I just
> looked, the prices vary from 14 Euro till 225 Euro, crazy), check if your
> card reader supports read/write from DOS, if yes, try to format it from an
> external machine, (dont forget Active Partition), run sys and test this CF.

This will have to wait. I have spare CF cards, but I currently don't have access to a machine with a DOS installation.

> Than I just return a backup to the CF card with "dd". Something like:

@bocke may you upload the MS-DOS image so that I can examine it?

You can upload the file directly to https://nextcloud.iww.rwth-aachen.de/index.php/s/rjmZzcJrZkWMcrE

You may also test if the EDR-DOS kernel works. I can provide you with an image for it if you are interested.

It might also be possible to get the image I sent you running by forcing FreeDOS to access the partition via LBA. To enforce this, the partition type may be changed to FAT16 LBA (0x0E). I assume that XTIDE supports LBA access.

Thanks!

>
> @bocke may you upload the MS-DOS image so that I can examine it?
>
> You can upload the file directly to
> https://nextcloud.iww.rwth-aachen.de/index.php/s/rjmZzcJrZkWMcrE
>

I will. Thanks.

Not immediately though. I have to test something first. But in half an hour up to an hour at most.

> You may also test if the EDR-DOS kernel works. I can provide you with an
> image for it if you are interested.
>

If you don't mind, I'm willing to test it.


> It might also be possible to get the image I sent you running by forcing
> FreeDOS to access the partition via LBA. To enforce this, the partition
> type may be changed to FAT16 LBA (0x0E). I assume that XTIDE supports LBA
> access.
>

I will look into it. It's simple to do within cfdisk on Linux.

> > Than I just return a backup to the CF card with "dd". Something like:
>
> @bocke may you upload the MS-DOS image so that I can examine it?
>
> You can upload the file directly to
> https://nextcloud.iww.rwth-aachen.de/index.php/s/rjmZzcJrZkWMcrE

I uploaded it right now. I checked it and this image works when copied to CF via "dd". It boots.

> Which kernel revisions exactly did you test? Can you try a current build
> like the one available at
> https://github.com/FDOS/kernel/actions/runs/7281511383?


I'm going to retest this once again in case I missed something.

> > > Than I just return a backup to the CF card with "dd". Something like:
> >
> > @bocke may you upload the MS-DOS image so that I can examine it?
> >
> > You can upload the file directly to
> > https://nextcloud.iww.rwth-aachen.de/index.php/s/rjmZzcJrZkWMcrE
>
> I uploaded it right now. I checked it and this image works when copied to
> CF via "dd". It boots.

Thanks for providing this. The BPB of the partition shows some interesting things I did not see until now:

Partition table entry:
80 01 01 00 06 FE 3F 3D 3F 00 00 00 7F 32 0F 00

Volume boot record:
EB 58 90 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 00 02 10 01 00
02 00 02 00 00 F8 F8 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 79 0F 00 00 00 29 00 00 00 00 20 20 20 20 20
20 20 20 20 20 20 46 41 54 31 36 20 20 20 00 00
...

Offset 0x18 and 0x1A of the volume boot record, which should specify the sectors per track and head count, are zero. The partition table entry confirms that the partitions were indeed created under the assumption that the head count is 255. I did not see this either for such a small partition.

Would be interesting to see what INT13,08 (and 48, for completeness) actually return as geometry. Does anyone know a tool which simply dumps these values?

>
> So my proposal would be: If you have one more empty 512 MB CF card, (I just
> looked, the prices vary from 14 Euro till 225 Euro, crazy), check if your
> card reader supports read/write from DOS, if yes, try to format it from an
> external machine, (dont forget Active Partition), run sys and test this CF.

I don't really have a reader right now.

I use this:


There are two things to this: IDE to USB and CF to IDE controllers put together. And this works well enough.

I had 2 card readers but they mysteriously "passed away" few days ago. Haven't yet got the replacements.

I guess this thing might be one of the reasons the images don't boot. But I'm puzzled that they work under emulators like DOSBOX-X and Qemu.

I'll get a real card reader in a few days and will try again.

I currently put away my DOS machine in the closet. Although I have a small itx machine with some older AMD SOC. I might try puting FreeDOS on it with legacy USB support. But if the problem is with CF pin order, that might not help either. :(

Is it possible to transfer DOS mbr and system (what sys does in DOS) from Linux? I found somewhere a script sys-freedos-linux from Eric Auer (from several years back), but I didn't have any success with using it. It does write a MBR into the root of the drive, but the boot stops after writing "Freedos" on the boot line. It doesn't pick-up the kernel.sys from the root of the drive.

> Would be interesting to see what INT13,08 (and 48, for completeness)
> actually return as geometry. Does anyone know a tool which simply dumps
> these values?

This is what MSD sees:

I have just uploaded two files on Bernds account, but I noticed that it only supports uploads, not downloads.
So here they are for some days too:
http://www.bootablecd.de/DOS8088-vhd.7z
http://www.bootablecd.de/DOS8088-dd.7z

VHD version is for virtualbox (works also on Linux), dd is for extraction.
you can unextract the dd to your CF disk. I tested the rebuilt vhd and it works in virtualbox, so the dd version should also work for you. If necessary, rename the ending.
It has a size of 512MB, only the FD basics are on it - and the FAT16 kernel.
So it should work for you. Latest fdisk and ranish (part) are on it.
The only thing where I am not sure is if there was a special command.com for older systems. At least there exist some different versions.
Could you please inform me when there are problems with it?

PS: Everything would have been easier when you had told us from beginning how you modified the system.

> PS: Everything would have been easier when you had told us from beginning
> how you modified the system.

I haven't done any hardware modification to the system.

It came with CF Card with MS-DOS preinstalled. I did a backup of that with ddrescue. Than after trying something I would restore that image with "dd" to get a working system again. So, it would look like this:

I tried to install FreeDOS by using "sys c:" in several ways:
1) By running it on device. This failed with an error you saw on one of the first images.

Every time I tried and it didn't work, I restored the previously backed-up image after that.

2) By mounting the backup image inside DOSBox-X and trying to run sys C: from there than writing the image to CF card anad trying to boot it. That also failed.

Hope it's clearer now. Cheers.
Every time I tried and it didn't work, I restored the previously backed-up image after that.

I tried several FreeDOS kernels 2039-2043, including the one linked by @boeckman earlier in the topic. They didn't work.

I restored the previously backed-up working image after that.

I also tried his modified CF image. That gave me a "light show" from one of the images.

Than I again restored previously backed-up working image.

So, I didn't really make significant changes to the card itself as I always returned one of the working backup images.

Oh, I also tried patritioning and formatting the disk from Linux with cfdisk and mkfs.vfat -F 16 (fat 16) and then doing a "SYS C:" under DOSBox-X. That didn't work either.

Anyways, no I didn't hack on the same contents of CF Card as you are probably imagining. I restored it to previous state via restoring the previous working image.

And I think I already mentioned it before, just not in as much detail as I don't really want to bore you with every little thing I tried. Because I tried a bunch of them several times. I've spent several hours yesterday and today on that. That's why I summarized only the most important parts.

Well, I don't mind writing it once more if it will help you somehow. It's just a bit tedious. But, thank you for being willing to help, anyway. I appreciate it. :)

Please simply test if the 512 image works!

> Yes, deriving from the values in the screenshot, the CHS geometry under
> FreeDOS is detected as 16 heads, while it was formatted with a head count
> of of 255.
>
> If the CF as a whole is less than 528 MB in size, 255 heads seems rather
> high, and 16 heads as reported by the XT-IDE BIOS is the "standard" one for
> such a disk size.

If I remember well there should exist some ATA command to enforce CHS geometry on LBA capable drives. Probably Linux/hdparam can play with this too:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/629411/is...ce-a-certain-chs-drive-geometry-in-modern-linux

But if the whole bootchain would use LBA (XTIDE? LBA MBR, LBA DBR, LBA partition...) then this problem shouldn't occur.

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

>
> So my proposal would be: If you have one more empty 512 MB CF card, (I just
> looked, the prices vary from 14 Euro till 225 Euro, crazy), check if your
> card reader supports read/write from DOS, if yes, try to format it from an
> external machine, (dont forget Active Partition), run sys and test this CF.

I bought 512MB CF for <$3 https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2255799922748202.html

The test below uses this 256MB for $11 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018X7RJQ4

I have a Book8088 v2. I did some testing. I imaged the FD13BOOT.IMG from FD 1.3 Floppy Edition[0] to my slot on my Gotek formatted USB stick. I then used a Dell 316SX (a 386) with a Gotek FDD emulator & XT-IDE r625 to boot FD v1.3 over floppy. Next, I FDISK'd a 256MB CF card as FAT16 (CHS 984/16/32). Rebooted again to floppy and then ran `format C:/q/s`. I then copied a few binaries from the FD floppy to the CF card. Rebooted to verify the 256MB CF card would boot and it worked.

Finally, popped out the CF card of the 316SX and placed it in the slot on the Book8088. Booted & it worked[1][2]. See the pic below for reference.

No magic other than I've been working to restore the Dell 316SX so it now has a NIC with the XT-IDE r625 BIOS in it's ROM slot. The original 3.5" & 5.25" drives aren't spinning and I need to refurb those next.

You could try imaging a small (<2GB) USB stick with FD13BOOT.IMG and try booting off that as well [3]. It might take a reflash of the BIOS. They'll need to hit 'A' quickly to redirect XT-IDE to boot off floppy instead of the CF. I might test that as well.


[0] https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos...stributions/1.3/official/FD13-FloppyEdition.zip
[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Vq2RvNgPNxrCOuVEFDruw4NwJYCh4Zvv/view?usp=drive_link
[2] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NsKzz5WK4fw_wn-2WBnaH8sTsIyGs-ZN/view?usp=drive_link
[3] https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/book-808...ry-and-modification-thread.1245155/post-1343495

A review on another retro forum recommends to upgrade the Book8088 BIOS to this one: https://github.com/skiselev/8088_bios

The review is not impressed by quality of housing and keyboard, but in general, the device seems okay. By default, it seems to come with a 504 MB CF.
There also is an USB port, which only recognizes FAT16 storage and only at boot, not when you plug or change devices later. There is a turbo mode which can be activated with Fn F6 and unfortunately Windows 3.0 only works with EGA drivers due to the reviewer not finding any Cirrus GD5422 compatible Win3 VGA drivers. Interestingly, the NSSI tool fails while in turbo mode. Getting the device from China will usually involve having to pay taxes and filling some forms on receipt in Germany.

PS: Somebody in the same thread mentions SBEMU now making DOS compatible sound possible on some EEEpc models

---
FreeDOS / DOSEMU2 / ...

> Please test if the 512 image works.

Unfortunately no. I get stucked at the same place:

> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018X7RJQ4
>
> I have a Book8088 v2. I did some testing. I imaged the FD13BOOT.IMG from
> FD 1.3 Floppy Edition[0] to my slot on my Gotek formatted USB stick. I
> then used a Dell 316SX (a 386) with a Gotek FDD emulator & XT-IDE r625 to
> boot FD v1.3 over floppy. Next, I FDISK'd a 256MB CF card as FAT16 (CHS
> 984/16/32). Rebooted again to floppy and then ran `format C:/q/s`. I then
> copied a few binaries from the FD floppy to the CF card. Rebooted to
> verify the 256MB CF card would boot and it worked.
>
> Finally, popped out the CF card of the 316SX and placed it in the slot on
> the Book8088. Booted & it worked[1][2]. See the pic below for reference.
>
> No magic other than I've been working to restore the Dell 316SX so it now
> has a NIC with the XT-IDE r625 BIOS in it's ROM slot. The original 3.5" &
> 5.25" drives aren't spinning and I need to refurb those next.
>
> You could try imaging a small (<2GB) USB stick with FD13BOOT.IMG and try
> booting off that as well [3]. It might take a reflash of the BIOS. They'll
> need to hit 'A' quickly to redirect XT-IDE to boot off floppy instead of
> the CF. I might test that as well.
>
>

Thank you very much. I got a few ideas from this.

Can you make a raw disk image of that 256MB CF card and upload it somewhere? Of course delete anything that is propriatry (software) or any personal files. :)

> A review on another retro forum recommends to upgrade the Book8088 BIOS to
> this one: https://github.com/skiselev/8088_bios
>

Just be careful that there are two versions of Book8088. This was last tested with version v1. Although it's likely to work with v2, might be better to burn it on a spare EEPROM before trying it out.

> The review is not impressed by quality of housing and keyboard, but in
> general, the device seems okay. By default, it seems to come with a 504 MB
> CF.

Keyboard is ok-ish. Nothing special, but I've seen worse on netbooks. Housing - I agree. The lower part is pretty much see through. Although that also has a bit of charm, because you can somewhat see different components.

> unfortunately Windows 3.0 only works with EGA drivers due to the reviewer
> not finding any Cirrus GD5422 compatible Win3 VGA drivers.

I found this in 5 minutes on Archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/gd54xx

But I didn't even try searching on Google as it likely sucks when it comes to things like this. :)

P.S. I have EEE PC 701 and 901HD but haven't yet tried SBEMU. It's on todo list. :)

> I found this in 5 minutes on Archive.org:
> https://archive.org/details/gd54xx
>

But unfortunately that didn't work. :)

> https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/629411/is...ce-a-certain-chs-drive-geometry-in-modern-linux
>
> But if the whole bootchain would use LBA (XTIDE? LBA MBR, LBA DBR, LBA
> partition...) then this problem shouldn't occur.

Sounds interesting. I'll take a look into it. It might not be bad to try.

> > FD 1.3 Floppy Edition[0] to my slot on my Gotek formatted USB stick. I
> > then used a Dell 316SX (a 386) with a Gotek FDD emulator & XT-IDE r625
> to
> > boot FD v1.3 over floppy. Next, I FDISK'd a 256MB CF card as FAT16 (CHS
> > 984/16/32). Rebooted again to floppy and then ran `format C:/q/s`. I

>
> Thank you very much. I got a few ideas from this.
>
> Can you make a raw disk image of that 256MB CF card and upload it
> somewhere? Of course delete anything that is propriatry (software) or any
> personal files. :)

Sure give me a few hours. I’ll even make one with a 512MB of the same type as you have.