Hi Zeno in Zurich,

> > you wrote about problems with USB booting FreeDOS on
> > bugzilla.freedos.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1970

> 1. I collected all my trial an error steps here:
> http://www.ywesee.com/pmwiki.php/Site/FlashingBiosOfALinuxServer

Please do not link to www.fdos.org/bootdisks/autogen/FDOEM.144.gz
as this page is EXTREMELY outdated. Plus the bootdisk contains only
kernel / config / sys / autoexec / command but no himem or better
himemx, so you only have little DOS RAM free. The fdos.org FDOEM
image kernel is 2035b-cvs from July 2005, three years old now...

Try one of the images or kernels at http://rugxulo.googlepages.com/
... thank you :-)

It is probably a typo that you write "if you follow this HowTo"
in a way which makes "HowTo" a wiki link ;-).

To use mount and makebootfat as described you will probably have
to be root. Try using mtools instead to modify contents of USB
and floppy images.

dd count=8000 if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/floppy ; mkdosfs /tmp/floppy
is probably ambiguous. Better use for example bs=1024 count=2880
instead of using only count. If size is higher, better not call
the file "floppy" to avoid confusing readers :-).

> 2. By using the Bios Utility of HP I found out that the first cylinder
> (of my first partition) of my USB Stick has to start at _1_ and end at
> _214_. If it ends at 976 or even higher I get the '256 error'.

This depends on the size of your USB stick. What you see
in your fdisk screenshot (could you make that text instead
of image? Thanks...) is that your stick is 2 GB, 246*255*63.
For more, you would need FAT32, but your "if it is 976" can
mean that (without the "-E 255" option??) your Linux tool
had created a partitioning where the "head" count is not
255 but for example 64. So the "256 error" might mean that
geometry between "when BIOS boots" and "when you created
the boot sector" mismatch and the kernel fails to get good
access to the filesystem when you boot.

Where do the fat12.bss fat16.bss and fat32lba.bss come from?

The www.stilen.com/notes/usb_dos_boot.txt matches your bug
description very well: The author writes that having geometry
mismatches will make the kernel fail to load command.com :-)
"WARNING: using suspect partition" from 0-0-63 to 976-8-8
instead of 0-1-1 to 1023-30-62 (960 MB) is a tell-tale sign.

> 3. I formatted my drive with "FAT32 (LBA)"
> 4. I followed most of the steps in this HowTo:
> http://www.stilen.com/notes/usb_dos_boot.txt

> I also read a couple of other HowTo's where I found out how to use
> "makebootfat" properly. But without doing above mentioned step 2, I
> always received the '256 error' mentioned in my bug report. If you can
> recommend an easier solution then mentioned in step 4, please let me
> know.

http://ben.franske.com/blogs/2007/08/21/booting_dos_from_a_usb_flash_drive
has the links to syslinux, makebootfat (from advancemame.sf.net)
and FreeDOS fdbasews, the latter to get the boot sector sources
from the source code... Better use sourceforge.net/projects/freedos/
if you want only kernel and sources :-). Newer SVN snapshots are
available at rugxulo.googlepages.com. Instead of makebootfat you can
also try www.auersoft.eu/soft/specials/ sys-freedos-linux, which does
include the boot sectors already, but might be harder to use because
it only creates a bootsector without doing the fdisk and format step.

I hope the above helps to improve your new howto and helps to
find out whether and which bug is actually present in FreeDOS.

Thanks for your feedback again :-)

Eric