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BCOS "Make Floppy" Utility Documentation
 

Contents

1                Overview
2                Command Line Syntax
3                Features



1   Overview

The "make floppy" (mk_flop) utility creates bootable floppy images from several other files.


2   Command Line Syntax

With no command line arguments the utility will display it's help, which just lists command line arguments.

To create a bootable floppy image, the command line must consist of (in order):

    
•The format for the floppy image being created. Currently supported floppy formats are:
•2880 (80 cylinders, 2 heads, 36 sectors per track)
•1680 (80 cylinders, 2 heads, 21 sectors per track)
•1440 (80 cylinders, 2 heads, 18 sectors per track)
•1200 (80 cylinders, 2 heads, 15 sectors per track)
•720 (80 cylinders, 2 heads, 9 sectors per track)
•360 (40 cylinders, 2 heads, 9 sectors per track)
•320 (40 cylinders, 2 heads, 8 sectors per track)
•180 (40 cylinders, 1 head, 9 sectors per track)
•160 (40 cylinders, 1 head, 8 sectors per track)
•The file name for the boot loader
•The file name for the Faulty RAM List
•The file name for the Boot Script
•The file name for the Common PC BIOS Module
•The file name for the Boot Image
•The file name for the floppy image being created

Note: Additional floppy formats can easily be supported on request.

An example of using the utility to create a bootable 1440 KiB floppy image is shown in Listing 2.1: Command Line Example.

./mk_flop 1440 bin/bootflop.bin bin/default.frl bin/default.bsc bin/commonpc.bin bin/install.sbi www/ftp/flop1440.img
Listing 2.1 - Command Line Example


3   Features

The "make floppy" (mk_flop) utility will automatically check CRCs in source files and set them if they aren't already present. This allows corrupt files to be detected when the floppy image is created, and when the OS is being booted.

The utility will also create a redundant floppy image if the floppy format has 2 heads and there is enough space on the disk. Otherwise a normal floppy image will be created. For redundant floppies, 2 copies of the data is present, and the second copy is used if the first copy is unreadable (so that the OS can boot reliably from unreliable disks). The standard boot loader includes full support for redundant floppies and normal floppies.

If the host OS supports it, the floppy image be created as a sparse file.

Generated on Sat Aug 1 16:05:47 2009