Grub4dos Alternatives

grub4dos reviews and mentions

• Building DOS-Compatible Hard Disks
  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 11 Aug 2023

  Yes, the DOS 7.1 (the one that comes with Windows 98) has also the capability (the actual IO.SYS or the bootsector code) to boot even if the IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS are not the first files on the volume (unlike last "real" DOS 6.22).

  In case, there is still bootpart (by Gilles Vollant) that can rewrite the root so that IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS are first files:

  https://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm

  To manage partition ID's, active and hidden status, etc, I would suggest instead grub4dos that has all the needed commands and of course a whole lot of (sometimes useful) booting capabilities, including the capability to boot a MS-DOS IO.SYS by directly chainloading it (i.e. bypassing the bootsector code, either the last 0.4.5c:

  http://grub4dos.chenall.net/downloads/grub4dos-0.4.5c-2016-0...

  or any more recent 0.4.6a version (legacy, not "for UEFI"):

  https://github.com/chenall/grub4dos/releases

  should be fine .

  Of course in case of booting troubles you need to boot it from an external media.

  The page by jdebp, as well as the article in the topic are all about "ancient" MS-DOS versions, they are very useful if you are trying reproducing the past, but they (fortunately) do not apply to latest DOS or NT systems, though there are still - here and there - a number of little quirks, even on NT based systems, only as a side note in some cases you need to disable the CHS checks in order to be able to boot NT/2K/XP (and possibly later):

  https://clemens.endorphin.org/2007/12/removing-chs-based-acc...

  http://reboot.pro/topic/8528-how-to-patch-fat32-boot-sector/...

• macOS Internals
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 7 May 2023

  > The Full Version is a fully loaded version with GNome and several other smaller window managers, and the full line of tools for GNome. The lite version is a full console version with everything from the full version excluding the X environment, therefore being able to be run on older machines.

  Looking this up more brings me to umsdos project, a filesystem that apparently runs on top of another filesystem

  https://tldp.org/HOWTO/UMSDOS-HOWTO.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAT_filesystem_and_Linux

  This brings me to loadlin:

  > loadlin is a Linux boot loader that runs under 16-bit real-mode DOS (including the MS-DOS mode of Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me startup disk). It allows the Linux system to load and replace the running DOS without altering existing DOS system files.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loadlin

  And then there's also grub4dos

  https://github.com/chenall/grub4dos

• Grub
  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 7 May 2021

  Wikipedia articles have apparently good info but not always really-really correct/updated:

  >GRUB4DOS was a now-defunct GRUB legacy fork that improves the installation experience on DOS and Microsoft Windows by putting everything besides the GRLDR config in one image file. It can be loaded by the Windows Boot Manager.[33][34]

  grub4dos was never defunct, it changed quite a few sites/places of development but it is still alive andd kicking and now has also a version with UEFI support:

  https://github.com/chenall/grub4dos

  Unofficial western forum:

  http://reboot.pro/index.php?showforum=66

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