Date: Sun, 26 Jan 97 23:14:40 MST
Message-Id: <9701270614.AA01070@rgfn.epcc.Edu>
From: av568 AT rgfn DOT epcc DOT Edu (Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church)
To: weiqigao AT crl DOT com
Subject: Re: [opendos] Grub and OpenDOS
Cc: opendos AT mail DOT tacoma DOT net
Reply-To: av568 AT rgfn DOT epcc DOT Edu
Sender: owner-opendos AT mail DOT tacoma DOT net
Precedence: bulk



>
>Thanks to the alternative Web site posted to this mailing list earlier
>today, I was able to get the DOD701.EXE file downloaded.
>
>I now have the five floppy set of OpenDOS.  I upgraded my pure MS-DOS 6.2
>machine, and it went fine.  I then uninstalled it, and that worked fine too
>(although "DR DOS" still lurks around in the uninstall.exe banner).
>
>I then attempted to install OpenDOS to my second IDE drive, hoping to use
>grub to multi-boot to both MS-DOS and OpenDOS later on.  OpenDOS happily
>allowed me to install itself to the D: drive (reporting that it failed to
>save the old boot information, but went ahead and SYSed the drive).

This should be normal (I think) if there was no operating system on that 
drive.

>However, when I used grub to try to boot that partition, OpenDOS reported
>"Failed to load DOS, press any key...".

Please post your "menu.lst" file. In general, here is how to add an entry 
for any non-Multiboot-compliant (which is just about all :) operating 
systems:

--cut--

# Generic booter
title=Generic
root=(hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader=+1

--cut--

Replace (hd0,0) with your hard drive and partition. For example, the 
first partition on DOS drive D: would be (hd1,0). What the above does is 
tell GRUB to load and execute as the BIOS would the first sector (the 
boot sector) of the specified hard disk and partition. I haven't been 
able to test this with OpenDOS (still can't get a working HD install, and 
the FD install is of no use since my first floppy disk is a 1.2) but it 
should probably work.

>Before I go any further, I'd like to hear if what I'm trying to do is at
>all possible and makes sense.  (For example, the grub documentation didn't
>mention OpenDOS as one of its supported OSs, etc.)

Sure it should work. As to not mentioning OpenDOS, that's to be expected 
since OpenDOS wasn't released yet, and the author of GRUB probably still 
has never heard of it. :)

--
Beautiful Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church - av568 AT rgfn DOT epcc DOT edu
We have what you need-- A Savior!