Make And Emulate a FAT12 Floppy

[Nathan]

Hello,
I'm trying to work with BootProg, but one of it's requirements(for the boot sector) is to have a FAT12 formatted floppy, to write the boot loader. I've tried to create the floppy image using Virtual Floppy Drive, MagicISO and WinImage, but used only Virtual Floppy Drive to emulate my floppy image(because I think this is the only program that can emulate floppy's).

When I try to run BOOTABLE.EXE(to write the boot sector, program that is included with BootProg), I got this:

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C:\bootprog> bootable boot.bin A:
Loading a boot sector file...
  OK.
Reading original boot sector...
  OK.
Altering original boot sector...
  FAT types don't match.
    Original FAT type: FAT16
    New      FAT type: FAT12
  Failed.

I don't know what to do. Could you help me?

Best Regards,
Nathan Paulino Campos

[gravaera]

Maybe you could try reading the error code.

[Nathan]

My floppy image is a FAT16, and it should be FAT12. This is the error(as I can see).

[pcmattman]

dd + mkdosfs.

Don't even need to mount the image.

[Nathan]

dd + mkdosfs.

Don't even need to mount the image.

Yeah, but I need to mount the image, because the program BOOTABLE.EXE just writes to a "physical" drive.

Also, did you have a good tutorial of how to use dd and mkdosfs using Cygwin?

[pcmattman]

dd + mkdosfs can create a FAT12 image... that you can mount with VFD and use with this "BOOTABLE.EXE" thing you're obsessed with.

It'd be easier to just write your own bootloader.

As for tutorials, you can spend 30 seconds on Google, I'm not doing that for you. Or try "man dd" and "man mkdosfs" and try learning something for yourself for once.

[Nathan]

Ok, I've done better, I got my Linux laptop(an Eee PC 904HD with Ubuntu Hardy Heron), and I will do all, using Wine to help me with the BootProg things.

[Tosi]

As far as I know you don't need anything like BootProg on linux.
You can set up a floppy image as a loopback device (see losetup(8)) and then mount it like any other device.

[Nathan]

As far as I know you don't need anything like BootProg on linux.
You can set up a floppy image as a loopback device (see losetup(8)) and then mount it like any other device.

Yeah, I know that, but I'm mounting it to a directory(/mnt/os), then when I try to write to the boot sector, like this:

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dd if=/mnt/os of=boot.bin bs=1 count=512 skip=0

I got an error message saying that it's a directory.

What I need to do?

[Combuster]

Mounting is for accessing the filesystem. Access the image for writing the bootsector.

[Nathan]

Mounting is for accessing the filesystem. Access the image for writing the bootsector.

Using cat for this?

[tharkun]

Unmount the image, and then dd to the loop back device, replace /dev/loop0 with the name of the loopback device.

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dd if=boot.bin of=/dev/loop0 bs=1 count=512 skip=0

This will write the bootsector to the loop device (and your floppy image)

[Nathan]

Now I just got a 512 bytes image(that is just the copy of the binary), just like if I do like this:

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cat boot.bin > os.img

Let's do this better, someone creates a FAT12 floppy image, install BootProg on it and send me.

[Combuster]

Since you're asking for a floppy and not a floppy image, Can we have your post address? I happen to have something

[Nathan]

Nice joke.

But on my question that is on the last post, I've asked to a floppy image.