No luck with FreeDos boot CD

[Nate]

Hi - I have built a FreeDos boot CD using the latest OEM CD-ROM disc
builder from the ripcord page (http://www.fdos.org/bootdisks/), and
when I boot from the resulting CD, the boot fails with SHSUCDX telling
me this:

"Need more drive letters. SHSUCDX can't install."

I built the ISO without making any changes at all. That is, I simply
ran makeiso.bat, and burnt the resulting ISO to a CD. My system is a
vanilla x86 with one hard drive and one CD-ROM drive.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
-nate

[Gerry_uk]

Hi,

It sounds a bit odd, the official CD should "just work". I don't use
official stuff, but here's some info that may help.

There's two parts to loading up a CD-ROM; first the driver is loaded in
config.sys and then the drive letter is assigned in autoexec.bat

I notice I'm using vide-cdd.sys for the driver (not part of FreeDOS but
highly recommended by FreeDOS developers) and then I use SHSUCDX for the
drive letter assignment, BUT I also notice I had downloaded the latest
SHSUCDX because there was a problem with the one in the official ISO.

My autoexec.bat (FDAUTO.BAT) looks like this

@echo off
echo Running FDAUTO from boot emulation
rem Assign drive letter X to CD-ROM driver named FDCD0000
if not exist FDCD0000 goto err0
rem this will load high anyway
shsucdx /d:FDCD0000,X
if not exist x:\*.* goto err1
...

Note that I test for the existence of the CD driver _before_ I try to
assign a drive letter, then I make the call to SHSUCDX

--
Gerry_uk

[Nate]

Thank you for the reply Gerry. I'll try your way.

-nate

[Nate]

Gerry, your way worked for me, thank you. The problem could have been
with either ELTORITO.SYS or CDRCACHE.SYS. I replaced ELTORITO.SYS
with SHUSCDX.SYS, and I simply left out the drive caching.

If anyone on the FreeDOS dev team is monitoring these threads, please
take note of this. The boot CD is broken in a very visible, obvious
way.

Thanks again Gerry.

-nate