Feature requests

[krs]

Thanks for your excellent bootmanager. I've just got a couple of issues you may want to have a look at.

I've got an old 700mhz Compaq iPAQ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPAQ_(desktop_computer)

It doesn't boot from USB but Plop 5.0.3 works on it fine (a bit slow). However, I've tried most of the later versions of plop in all 3 modes, none of them work, it just locks up.
Would it be easy to have another mode equivalent to 5.0.3?

Also, say you've got an old version of plop installed on your hard drive, booting from the windows boot menu, but have a later version on your USB stick which you load via grub. It doesn't seem to properly replace the version in memory and then boot as if only the newer version had ever been in memory. It's ok because it's easy to update the version of plop loaded by grub on the hard drive, just not ideal.

Hope that's all clear.

Thanks in advance.

[Elmar]

It doesn't boot from USB but Plop 5.0.3 works on it fine (a bit slow). However, I've tried most of the later versions

did you try 5.0.10 too?

regards
elmar

[krs]

did you try 5.0.10 too?

Yes

[Elmar]

what type of usb controller is in the pc (uhci, ohci, ehci)?

[krs]

It's UHCI, 810E chipset I believe.

[krs]

I've been conducting some experiments.
I upgraded my version of grub4dos to 0.4.4-2009-10-16 from 31.3.09 (I think).
It now always boots into the grub menu, where as it only did very occasionally before and it always boots 'Offline NT Password & Registry Editor' from here, but never boots DSL linux! It all works with 5.0.3.
I've briefly tried Super Grub2 Disk but it doesn't seem to help. I've got some other experiments in mind so I'll keep you posted.
Hopefully this sheds some light on the problem.

BTW I've quickly tried 5.0.11-test but it only boots to the background with no menu.

Thanks again.

[krs]

What I have found so far is if I boot to dos using 5.0.10 via the windows boot menu. When it tries to load XMS driver v3.95 it returns;
ERROR: Unable to control A20 line!
XMS Driver not installed.

This doesn't happen if I use 5.0.3 or boot Plop via Grub.

Is this a bug?

[Elmar]

please post your xms driver as attachment.

[krs]

It's just the standard himem.sys from Win98SE.

[Elmar]

BTW I've quickly tried 5.0.11-test but it only boots to the background with no menu.

how did you start the test version?

[krs]

What I should have said is it no longer prompts me to press ctrl-esc, it goes straight to just the background. If I press ctrl-esc anyway it does still take me into the menu. Didn't think off that at the time, Sorry!
The usb driver seems to perform exactly the same.
This is with grub4dos 0.4.4 2009-06-20 on the hard drive (0.4.5b 2010-05-29 on the USB stick).
If you think you may have resolved the XMS memory issues, or you would find it useful for some other reason, I can try loading it via ntldr direct. Otherwise I could even experiment with syslinux if there is a way (do you know?) of loading it via ntldr.
Cheers.

[Elmar]

ctrl-esc:
is it the starfield background (graphic mode) or is it the text mode (with squares in the background)?

about the himem.sys problem. i have seen, i am using the same himem.sys version, but i had never problems. however, maybe we can figure out whats the cause of the problem on your machine and fix it.
please test this http://download.plop.at/tmp/plpbt.bin

regards
elmar

[Elmar]

BTW I've quickly tried 5.0.11-test but it only boots to the background with no menu.

this should be fixed now with 5.0.11-test3

elmar

[krs]

Apologies for not replying to your earlier post, you have indeed fixed the problem of it booting to the background squares only. It now goes straight into the text mode menu.

Regarding the himem.sys issue, I've also tried the other test file but it seems to behave in exactly the same way as before.

Thanks.