possible to un-multiboot a disc?

[mimo]

I want to get 1 program off a multiboot disc, is it possible, or could someone do it for me if a send the .atr?

 

Cheers

Mike

[Rybags]

Possible, sure.

 

How easy or otherwise can vary. How about put up the image and I'll have a look.

[mimo]

Possible, sure.

 

How easy or otherwise can vary. How about put up the image and I'll have a look.

ok, but off to bed now.

 

Thanks for the offer

[carmel_andrews]

if you have a multiboot disk with a menu system on it and a spare diskette

 

All you do is go into the menu creation program (which is autoloaded when you boot up a multiboot disk) then take out the multiboot disk, stick in the spare diskette and choose the option of formatting the diskette and format.....Once format is complete, take out the spare diskette put in the menu disk again and select the option of transfering a multiboot file to boot disk...take out the menu disk once the program has asked you to insert the boot or destination disk and press the key that completes transferring the file to boot disk

 

If memory serves me right, Ian K, Rob C and Howfendos menu creation programs allow you to move multiboot files to boot tape/disk

[Rybags]

That's just one "multiboot" menu system. There were dozens.

 

Many used their own filing system, and most didn't include such utilities on the disks they created.

[Shannon]

I remember having some old multiboot discs. I think they were called GAME BLASTER, or GAME MASTER or something along those lines. They would deliberately change the TOC so DOS could not read the games off them properly. I guess to keep people from copying the pirated games.

[Rybags]

Not really deliberate.

 

Reading DOS files is easy, but in a stand-alone enviro where you want a small loader, just raw sector R/W with a more basic file managing system is easier to do.

 

But, IMO the only advantage such custom loaders offer is long filenames - oh and I guess the extra 3 bytes per sector by not maintaining the DOS links etc.

[carmel_andrews]

I wasn't a big fan of the dos menu's due to sector usage, the non dos menu's offered slightly more sector usage

 

The only Multiboot Menu i remember apart from Multiboot itself were JW (John Williams, which was renamed multiboot) Howfendos, Ian K, C Elton (also known as U S Doubler menu) Ambi Menu, Rob C and the Variants on M/Boot (mainly for 1050's and modd'd drives)

 

I recall a european game dos (either german or polish) that didn't use 360-368 to store the directory sectors...I can't recall what games were on those menu's, i do have the disks butr not a working 1050

[+CharlieChaplin]

Well,

for most of these menu-disks (excluding Howfen-DOS) and programs on it there are converters available, like BOOT2DOS and others. Boot2Dos will convert programs from multiboot and other menus to DOS 2 format...

 

Afaik, these "british-menus" had their directory and VTOC in the first 10-12 sectors of a disk...

 

-Andreas Koch.

[Shannon]

I'd have to dig around and see if I still have one of those menu disks. But they would actually put the files directory entry where DOS would normally look for it. The only thing they changed is the link at the end of each sector that told where the next sector was. Or something like that.

 

Either that or the final sector did not have the EOF marker. I forget. It was a looooong time ago.

 

I only knew about it cause I was working on my own letter 1-3 sector game loader menu thingy. Even wrote a program to create executable from bootable cassettes and one that would let you put multi-load binary files on cassette (did it for a friend who didn't own a disk drive).

Edited February 19, 2008 by Shannon

[carmel_andrews]

Just to point out CC/AK....Boot2Dos will only work on howfen files that were created with boot disk/tape to menu (from within howfendos and that takes up less then 256 sectors

 

Actually, it won't work with howfen files, what you need to do is transfer the howfen file back to a boot disk (as long as it was created using boot disk/tape to menu) and takes up less then 256 sectors then load up boot2dos and choose then boot disk to dos option

[+CharlieChaplin]

Hmm,

already tried to transfer Howfen files back to bootdisks and then use the Boot2DOS converter to transfer them into DOS 2 files, but it did not work. Looks like the converter program stops at the first empty sector... and alas, the Howfen bootdisks (created with Howfen DOS menu => bootdisk option or with Howfen`s tape to disk program) seem to use only 2 bootsectors and leave bootsector 3 empty... so all I got in the end were two converted sectors... -Andreas Koch.

[carmel_andrews]

Charlie Chaplin....There are two (2) types of howfen file

 

1 if howfen files created using the separate tape to boot disk program and then the recently created boot disk to boot menu

 

2 - if the howfen files are created using the boot tape to menu program (from within howfendos)

 

the difference between the two is the the former creates a multi load, multistage disk load, the later creates a single load, load (you can only use the latter on bootmenu to dos, providing you've put that howfen file onto a boot disk and it's less then 256/255 sectors