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  • BootAble – FreeDOS boot testing freeware

    To obtain direct, low-level access to a system's mass storage drives, SpinRite runs under a GRC-customized version of FreeDOS which has been modified to add compatibility with all file systems. In order to run SpinRite it must first be possible to boot FreeDOS.

    GRC's “BootAble” freeware allows anyone to easily create BIOS-bootable media in order to workout and confirm the details of getting a machine to boot FreeDOS through a BIOS. Once the means of doing that has been determined, the media created by SpinRite can be booted and run in the same way.

    The participants here, who have taken the time to share their knowledge and experience, their successes and some frustrations with booting their computers into FreeDOS, have created a valuable knowledgebase which will benefit everyone who follows.

    You may click on the image to the right to obtain your own copy of BootAble. Then use the knowledge and experience documented here to boot your computer(s) into FreeDOS. And please do not hesitate to ask questions – nowhere else can better answers be found.

    (You may permanently close this reminder with the 'X' in the upper right.)

F

f15sim

New member
Nov 15, 2024
4
0
I bought myself a shiny new copy of SpinRite today after seeing 6.1 finally arrived.

A funny thing happens when you quit reading at "UEFI" - you build a boot disk, copy SpinRite over to it, boot it, and then get told off for not using some special, blessed version of FreeDOS.

The machine I'm using for SpinRite was built long before USB was ever a fever dream, let alone a physical thing.

After much cursing, I grab this "bootable" thing and use RaWrite v1.2 (what I had on the machine) to write out the image. What I get is an unreadable, unbootable disk.

Apparently RaWrite 1.2 isn't good enough, and I've yet to see anyone mention writing a disk on a real DOS machine.

What magic tool* is required in order to write "bootable.img" to a floppy drive that will result in a bootable disk?

[Update! I've been told by a friend of mine that bootable.img isn't a floppy image, so regardless of what tool I try, it won't ever work. Nice.]

[*] Tool must operate under MS-DOS.

Thanks!
g.
 
Last edited:
Surely your only device is not this ancient thing that runs only MSDOS. SpinRite is a dual mode .EXE and runs under Windows and under DOS. If you run it under Windows, it will help you make boot media for the DOS mode and copy itself into it. Give this a try?
 
Of course not. However, the only machine I can write floppies on is the machine I want to run the software on.

g.
 
IIRC Steve decided that any machine with floppies was unlikely to have a disk over 2.2TB, and that 6.0 worked perfectly for smaller disks. It was also discussed that very few machines have floppy drives these days, so the floppy handling code was removed from 6.1. BICBW.
 
AlanD said:
IIRC Steve decided that any machine with floppies was unlikely to have a disk over 2.2TB, and that 6.0 worked perfectly for smaller disks. It was also discussed that very few machines have floppy drives these days, so the floppy handling code was removed from 6.1. BICBW.
Click to expand...
6.1 removed support for scanning floppies, but you can still run 6.1 from a floppy. The Windows side of 6.1 still has options for directly creating a floppy disk and writing an IMG file that can be written to floppy later. This works with USB floppy drives.

1731713049098.png


1731713064248.png


1731713143772.png


1731713157202.png
 
I was today years old when I learned an MS-DOS executable could co-exist with a Windows executable in the same binary image. Neat! Thanks for the clue by four. ;)

The machines that I have that run Windows do not possess floppy drives. Is there a mechanism available to get SpinRite to just write an image file instead of demanding a diskette to write on?

The machine I want to use SpinRite with has enough RAM.

tnx!

g.
 
I scrounged up a USB floppy drive. I'm in business now. Thanks all. Apologies for the noise.

g.
 
There's no need to apologize. This forum exists so we can share knowledge and help each other solve problems 😄
 
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