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Thanks for working that out -- I had looked into using a JS x86 emulator of some sort to put up a demo when I wrote this, but ran out of time last Christmas :-)

Thanks for working that out -- I had looked into using a JS x86 emulator of some sort to put up a demo when I wrote this, but ran out of time last Christmas :-) Happy to hear it works with that emulator!

fuzzfactor 6y ago
Excellent, these are four good sectors in this floppy-sized IMG. Copy verbatim bitwise to a floppy and it boots bare metal in 5 seconds to the animated graphic. You only need the first four sectors; 0, 1, 2, & 3, or about 2K. Sector 0 is a working MBR/bootsector which continues with sectors 1, 2, and finishes with 3. On a USB flash drive most BIOS will want to treat it like a HDD rather than a large floppy so you will need to add a partition table on sector zero before it will boot from a HDD. So write zeros to the USB drive[0] then eject, reboot and copy the first four sectors (or the whole 2880) from treeosFloppy.img to the blank USB drive[1]. [0] dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx careful with dd at the Linux command line, make sure /dev/sdx is the exact USB drive you want to wipe [1] dd if=/mountedlocation/treeosFloppy.img of=/dev/sdx bs=512 count=4 Then partition the USB drive using CFDISK at Linux command line, in MBR layout, marked bootable, as type 0c FAT32. -this simply adds a partition table to its designated empty space still remaining on sector 0, the treeOS MBR bytes are still there on sector 0 after this too. The USB drive should now boot directly to the animated graphic not much differently than the floppy. --treeOS MBR does not actually utilize the partition table bytes, but when it's not a floppy, BIOS will not normally load & run sector 0 unless an active marked bootable partition table of some kind is found in its proper place on the physical sector 0 to begin with. Reboot to Windows then quick-format the USB drive FAT32 using Windows. Do not repartition, just quick-format. -the USB drive should now work normally for storage --but when properly selected as a boot device, will go directly to the graphic Alternatively using a regular HDD you can copy sector 0 of treeosFloppy.img to a new file on NTFS like c:\treeos.mbr then Windows BOOTMGR and/or NTLDR can be configured to put treeOS on its built-in Windows bootmenu alongside Windows by correctly referencing c:\treeos.mbr as a bootsector entry. As long as Windows is installed on a MBR-layout HDD for BIOS booting. With sectors 1, 2, & 3 of treeosFloppy.img in place on the corresponding (otherwise unused by BIOS) 1, 2, & 3 positions on the HDD, when c:\treeos.mbr is selected you can get the treeOS graphic from a Windows bootmenu even while Windows occupies sector 0 with its own regular Windows MBR. Plus then you're already multibooting Windows the factory way. Merry Christmas!

fuzzfactor 6y ago

Excellent, these are four good sectors in this floppy-sized IMG. Copy verbatim bitwise to a floppy and it boots bare metal in 5 seconds to the animated graphic. You only need the first four sectors; 0, 1, 2, & 3, or about 2K. Sector 0 is a working MBR/bootsector which continues with sectors 1, 2, and finishes with 3. On a USB flash drive most BIOS will want to treat it like a HDD rather than a large floppy so you will need to add a partition table on sector zero before it will boot from a HDD. So write zeros to the USB drive[0] then eject, reboot and copy the first four sectors (or the whole 2880) from treeosFloppy.img to the blank USB drive[1]. [0] dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx careful with dd at the Linux command line, make sure /dev/sdx is the exact USB drive you want to wipe [1] dd if=/mountedlocation/treeosFloppy.img of=/dev/sdx bs=512 count=4 Then partition the USB drive using CFDISK at Linux command line, in MBR layout, marked bootable, as type 0c FAT32. -this simply adds a partition table to its designated empty space still remaining on sector 0, the treeOS MBR bytes are still there on sector 0 after this too. The USB drive should now boot directly to the animated graphic not much differently than the floppy. --treeOS MBR does not actually utilize the partition table bytes, but when it's not a floppy, BIOS will not normally load & run sector 0 unless an active marked bootable partition table of some kind is found in its proper place on the physical sector 0 to begin with. Reboot to Windows then quick-format the USB drive FAT32 using Windows. Do not repartition, just quick-format. -the USB drive should now work normally for storage --but when properly selected as a boot device, will go directly to the graphic Alternatively using a regular HDD you can copy sector 0 of treeosFloppy.img to a new file on NTFS like c:\treeos.mbr then Windows BOOTMGR and/or NTLDR can be configured to put treeOS on its built-in Windows bootmenu alongside Windows by correctly referencing c:\treeos.mbr as a bootsector entry. As long as Windows is installed on a MBR-layout HDD for BIOS booting. With sectors 1, 2, & 3 of treeosFloppy.img in place on the corresponding (otherwise unused by BIOS) 1, 2, & 3 positions on the HDD, when c:\treeos.mbr is selected you can get the treeOS graphic from a Windows bootmenu even while Windows occupies sector 0 with its own regular Windows MBR. Plus then you're already multibooting Windows the factory way. Merry Christmas!