How do I make a BOOT CD - with no floppy

[LTR12101B]

I know how I'd do it WITH a floppy, I'd just make a usable boot floppy with the settings and loadings that I want, (plain, EMM386 etc.) abd then let the writing program turn it into the CD boot.

No floppy!

This freeware virtual floppy may save me from buying a USB floppy...

At first, I thought it was a problem that it was VFD format, and the software usually wants something like IMA/IMG, but so long as the virtual drive is there, the software should be able to read it from that.

Of course, I have an aversion to buying software to do this piddling task, I'd buy the USB floppy drive if it came to buying anything.

 

[weboneando]

If I understand right, you already have an image of the boot floppy? if this is correct then you don´t need a virtual floppy and neither a floppy drive, just run Nero and choose to make a CD-ROM(Boot) in the boot option instead of "bootable logical drive" choose "image file" point to your floppy image and that´s it.

 

[scarecrow]

www.bootidsk.com
You will find all kinds of boot disks there.
www.winrar.com
7-zip unfortunately doesn't work with the above self-extracting executables.
Actually winrar will popup an error message, but the image WILL be extracted properly. On most it's an .ima file.
www.winimage.com
It will allow you editing and converting many floppy image files, including .ima and .vfd (actually .vfd is the Powerquest proprieatary format, which is pure winimage with a different extension- PQ's image manipulator is a winimage version with less options).
Once you are finished with editing/converting your floppy image...
www.burnatonce.com
Can handle .bin, .img and .ima floppy disk images to make a CD bootable, which is more than enough.

 

[LTR12101B]

bootdisk.com is ok for pre-prepared ones, but I was looking at the way I would have done it... format a floppy, set up keyboard an mouse drivers, add HIMEM and EMM386 if appropriate - and that driver should do nicely - according to the page, it's the VMWARE format, though it can also do IMZ

The other thing I have, though I havent found it yet, is support for making bootable flash cards - which may also be an acceptable media source for some programs, as well as solving any local "special boot" issues, as it can boot them directly.

I suppose all memory of the floppy drive will dissapear, an end to "disk 39 of 40 failed" etc. 1.44Mb is just not a worthwhile unit of storage any more.

 

[weboneando]

bootdisk.com is ok for pre-prepared ones, but I was looking at the way I would have done it... format a floppy, set up keyboard an mouse drivers, add HIMEM and EMM386 if appropriate - and that driver should do nicely - according to the page, it's the VMWARE format, though it can also do IMZ

Last time I made one was using winimage, just formatted a floppy in XP making it bootable, then made an image of it with winimage and from there I added everything needed

I suppose all memory of the floppy drive will dissapear, an end to "disk 39 of 40 failed" etc. 1.44Mb is just not a worthwhile unit of storage any more.

With winimage you can convert a 1.44Mb image into 2.88Mb, still is too small as today standars but in the end it´s twice the capacity.

 

[ipdave]

With WinImage 7.0 you can take a 1.44 or 2.88mb floppy image (IMA or IMG) and expand it to fit / format a USB stick. Then you can fill it the rest of the way to its capacity. Mine is a 1gb with bootable 2.88 image with pointers to a programs folder on the stick to run Partition Magic, Ghost, DOS utilities (NTFS for DOS), etc.

 

[LTR12101B]

I tried out that free tool I found... PERFECT!

It opens the boot image supplied with Nero (never noticed that before)

It's just updated to 2.1 ... great to get by with freeware, instead of having to buy something for just one little task.