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#91

Boot Managers / plop 5 boots from USB only the...

Last post by att2 - March 23, 2022, 22:19:28 PM

Hello,
I fought long and hard to get Plop bootmanager 5.0.14 working again. I have a quite old computer, Intel Q6600, mobo is MSI-Neo3-FR. The motherboard frequently boots some WinPE-usb-sticks too slow (Sergej Strelec, Hirens Boot cd etc.), so booting them takes more than 11 minutes.
My old solution was that I first booted PLOP from the first usb-stick, then used PLOP to boot the second usb-stick with the WinPE-stuff on it. This worked for a while, but mysteriously, it stopped working recently.

So, yes I am booting stick1-> PLOP menu -> "USB-boot" -> boot from stick 2 -> ventoy boot menu -> Sergej Strelec ISO (will now boot FAST!)

Well, I found out why it stopped working. I converted my old sticks from FAT32 to NTFS with the command  "conv x: /fs:ntfs" , but when you boot a PLOP boot menu usb stick from NTFS, the PLOP boot manager _will_ show up, but when you tell him to boot from USB, PLOP will scan for all USB devices and then freeze in the middle. The starfield will stop, the keyboard will be unresponsive, you can't do anything anymore.

Can you make PLOP work with NTFS again ?

#92

Boot Managers / Re: PMB6 PATA Divide-by-zero

Last post by Elmar - February 08, 2022, 17:29:49 PM

Thanks for the report. It should be fixed with the next release.

#93

Boot Managers / PMB6 PATA Divide-by-zero

Last post by rcpa0 - February 07, 2022, 21:02:02 PM

PBM6 - Init hardware...
Timer... [OK]
PS/2... [OK]
PCI... [OK]
PATA...

Exception: ISR 0x00, Divide-by-zero Error
cs: 00000020 eip: 00008468 eflags: 00010206
ss: 0028 esp: 000224c8
eax: ff7fff7f ebx: 000000ff ecx: 0 edx: ff7fff7f
esi: aeed3574 edi: aeed35c6 ebp: 000224ec
ds: 0028 es: 0028 fs: 0008 gs: 0008
old ss: aeed3574 old esp: aeed2ba4 errorcode: 0
cr0: 00000011 cr2: 00f0c31d cr3: 00038000 cr4: 00000240

Plop Boot Manager 6 -test-20210909 iso

Phoenix AwardBIOS v6.00PC

#94

HFS+ Rescue / Re: [SOLVED] -s1 taking foreve...

Last post by David121314867 - February 02, 2022, 06:41:23 AM

I have been through with this problem before but I solved it by using software to analyze its performance.

#95

Boot Managers / Re: Would PLoP support VHD-fil...

Last post by David121314867 - February 02, 2022, 06:38:15 AM

I am surprised that people are sill using plpvhd.

#96

Boot Managers / Re: Would PLoP support VHD-fil...

Last post by Elmar - January 17, 2022, 09:56:20 AM

... Lemmings Worms Dune2 Warcraft MegaRace Try it

Offtopic: Megarace 2. I've seen the game in a computer magazine in the 90s. I think there was also a disc with the Tibet track. Outstanding graphics! I lost the magazine and forgot the name of the game. I was searching for this game more than 20 years. So funny

#97

Boot Managers / Re: Would PLoP support VHD-fil...

Last post by volume - January 16, 2022, 12:08:33 PM

but you are writting about PBM6 not plpvhd ...
I am really missing option list partitions and select another in plpvhd.bin

I will check PBM6 later...

#98

Boot Managers / Re: Would PLoP support VHD-fil...

Last post by Elmar - January 16, 2022, 12:01:47 PM

My request was about something else.
Nice to have option choose another partition if you has images on other partition.

The file commander will be available for all partitions (with a supported file system) on every drive.

There comes also support for a config file in the same way as it is already for PBM6-EFI. With the config file you can add custom boot entries, set automatic boot and much more.

#99

Boot Managers / Re: Would PLoP support VHD-fil...

Last post by volume - January 16, 2022, 07:55:53 AM

Hi Elmar,

PBM6 is quite complex new bootmanager, but new filemanager is quite nice.
(no exotic font like in old plop )

My request was about something else.
Nice to have option choose another partition if you has images on other partition.

Primary part [#1] 20GB WINDOWS (there is OS + SWAP + APPS + HIBERFILE)
Primary part [#2] 40GB volume_label DATA and there are VMDK/virtdisk files

your original plpvhd bootloader is not able switch to another (part#2 ) part.
and provide option boot legacy DOS with games
We have to always copy imagedisk file  to WINDOWS partition (part#1) and fragmentize it.

Yep it's for legacy applications on new HW but with direct HW access
there are still many many GOOD SW which is working fine in DOS not under
WinXP/7/8/10/11 due emulation and latency.

Changing bootloader is not always option
for example I am booting PLOP becouse BIOS has no support for USB
and then loading GRUB4DOS from USBstick and one option in bootmenu
is your virtual image loader
but user/operator who is booting computer must know how to choose image.

I am missing option switch partition to another available (easy task for you)
and tell which image have to be automatic loaded after selecting it from menu (grub has option write 0xHHHH) so we can pass paramater to your loader which partition and filename

But thank you for update this topic I will check PMB6
for me is not problem learn new stuffs,
but for some older people (60y+) is the BIG problem
learn new computer starting process...

Also for KIDS its a problem (about 5-6years) instruct it
wait son, key down, down choose this enter and wait your game (1992-2003) will be started.... Lemmings Worms Dune2 Warcraft MegaRace Try it

if you have a lot of time then KKND or Warzone 2100 there are pretty
clever AI much harder as in C&C TS or other older RTS.

#100

Boot Managers / Re: Would PLoP support VHD-fil...

Last post by Elmar - January 15, 2022, 18:33:37 PM

I checked plpvhd and it makes no sense to update the old program. It was a test program. Forget it.

I wrote some some drivers and a new tool for PBM6. The next release will have new features:

• A simple file commander to browse supported file systems and do some actions.
• Drivers for the file systems FAT12/16/32.
• A exFAT file system driver.
• Drivers for VHD and VHDX. For static and dynamic images.

All drivers have no write support at the moment. Just "read only". Also they are currently not optimized for speed.

VHD and VHDX:
I think except for DOS is this boot feature pretty useless. You can also start for example GRUB from inside the VHD/X, but Linux has to be prepared to boot from VHD/X. Booting Windows fails, because of the windows loader.

I made a short video clip of mounting and booting from VHDX with PBM6.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81jXfeYmW_c