New BOOTOS2
Released: V. 9.17

by @Macarlo, Team OS/2 registered

BOOTOS2 V. 9.17 just released and the Author, Mr. Kahn, uploads the file (btos2917.zip, 304Kb) on Hobbes. I, @Macarlo, registered user of 212 OS/2 programs, used BootOS2 since first version (1992). In my PC I'm currently running several OSs: five OS/2 versions, three Linux versions (all Red Hat, including V. 5.2 with animated 3D graphic interface), three new Windows (and NT) versions, MS-DOS. Currently I'm running four HDDs IDE and other several SCSI connected by Adaptec AHA2940AU, two CD_ROM, one to write CDs, ZIP Drive in parallel port, scanner, printers, several virtual disks etc etc. To maintain this paraphernalia running perfectly I use everyday four maintenance partitions I have in all IDE HDDs, created with BootOS2.

This new version of BOOTOS2 fixed <When adding Matrox support, removed drive letter from "SET MGA=\OS2" statement.>

The BOOTOS2 program is a utility that allows you to build a BOOTable OS/2 V2, V3 or V4 system using an existing OS/2 V2, V3 or V4 system. The BOOT system can be installed on either Floppy Disks or a Hard Disk Partition.


Photo shows BOOTOS2.EXE running on @Macarlo's Warp 4.0
How To Use BOOTOS2

There are three types of BOOT systems you can install:

Minimal : This is a basic OS/2 system that supports one or more OS/2
Full Screen sessions. All 16 and 32-bit OS/2 Full Screen
applications are supported. The ability to switch between different
Screen Sessions is supported by the supplied Protect Shell program,
BOS2SHL. You can switch between Screen Sessions, both OS/2 and VDM,
using the Alt-Esc key sequence.

A Minimal BOOT system can installed on a single 3.5" 1.44M Floppy
Disk or to a small (2-3M) hard disk partition. Installation to a
single 2.88M floppy disk is also supported. Because of space
constraints, it is highly recommended that unless you are
installing to a 2.88M disk or to a hard disk partition, you use
the 2DISK option to create a 2-Disk BOOT System. If your A: drive
is 5.25" 1.2M, the 2DISK option will be assumed.

PM : This is an OS/2 system that supports one or more OS/2 Full
Screen or PM sessions. If the VDM option is specified, support for
both Windowed (i.e. Seemless) and Full Screen VDM sessions is
added. The ability to switch between different Screen Sessions is
supported by the supplied Protect Shell program, PMSHELL. You can
switch between Screen Sessions, both OS/2 and VDM, using the
Alt-Esc key sequence.

A PM BOOT System requires about 9M of hard disk space. This does
not include the disk space needed for the SWAP file.

WPS : This is an OS/2 system that supports one or more OS/2 Full
Screen or PM sessions. If the VDM option is specified, support for
both Windowed (i.e. Seemless) and Full Screen VDM sessions is
added. The ability to switch between different Screen Sessions is
supported by the supplied Protect Shell program, PMSHELL. You can
switch between Screen Sessions, both OS/2 and VDM, using the
Alt-Esc key sequence. The difference between this and a PM BOOT
System is the availability of the OS/2 WPS. Certain default System
Program and Folder objects are included.

A WPS BOOT System requires about 9M of hard disk space. This does
not include the disk space needed for the SWAP file.

Syntax: BOOTOS2

SOURCE= Depending on what type of install you ask BOOTOS2 to
perform, certain files might be required from the
install disks you used to create your active OS/2
system. One file that is always required is SYSINSTX
which is used to create the OS/2 BOOT record, OS2BOOT.
The file SYSINSTX.COM is (so far) always found on the
first Install disk. If you are creating a BOOT Disk,
then the files KEYBOARD.DCP, VTBL850.DCP, and the
CONFIG.SYS file from the install disk are also required.

Normally BOOTOS2 will prompt you for the Install disks
it needs. However, if you installed OS/2 over a LAN
or equivalent redirected source, you can use the SOURCE
option to point to these redirected sources. The value
of SOURCE is usually a standard CID directory structure,
as defined in "GG24-3780 : OS/2 V2.0 and V2.1 Remote
Installation and Maintenance".

Alternatively, SOURCE can point to a single directory
where all the required files are located. This is the
usual format OS/2 CSD remote installs where all the
install disks are copied to a single directory. You
could alternatively create a single directory that
contains only those files needed by BOOTOS2 and use the
SOURCE option so users won't have to worry about install
disks.

NOTE : Do *not* specify SOURCE=A if you intend to use
the OS/2 Install Disks as your source for the
required files.

TARGET= By default, BOOTOS2 will install the BOOT system on a
floppy disk in your A: drive. You can use the TARGET=
argument to specify an alternate Drive to install the
BOOT system on. This alternate drive can be another
floppy or a Hard Disk Drive. Any medium capable of
being booted from can be a target.

Values for target are a single drive letter: A .. Z

TYPE=PM BOOTOS2 will install a BOOT System that will support
PM Applications. The BOOT System will be accessed as
a single OS/2 Windowed Command Prompt.

TYPE=WPS BOOTOS2 will install a BOOT system that will support
PM Applications. The BOOT System will be accessed
using the OS/2 WorkPlace Shell (WPS).

NLS By Default, BOOTOS2 will get information regarding the
NLS environment from the following CONFIG.SYS statements:

DEVINFO=KBD,xx,KEYBOARD.DCP : Default xx = US
COUNTRY=xxx,COUNTRY.SYS : Default xxx = 001
CodePage=xxx : Default xxx = 850

If your environment requires different values for the
above statements, you specify them via the NLS argument.
Please note that you must specify all three values.

NOTE: The statement is only valid for a TYPE=PM or
TYPE=WPS install. For a minimal install (the
default) the 'stripped' versions of the NLS
modules, KEYBOARD.DCP and VTBL850.DCP, are
used which do not support alternate values.

2DISK If creating a BOOT system where the target is a floppy
disk drive, the 2DISK option allows you to spread the
BOOT system across two disks, increasing the amount of
space available for both required and optional files.

By default, if your system has a B: drive, BOOTOS2 will
use that as the second drive. If you don't have a B:
drive then BOOTOS2 will use A: for both disks (in which
case you'll have to swap disks during OS/2 IPL).

Alternatively, you can specify an alternative target
drive for the second drive. This is useful when you
want to use a floppy drive other than B (for whatever
reason).

Also, if you have a B: drive, but still want to create a
2-Disk BOOT system using only the A: drive, you can
specify 2DISK=A to override the default of using B.

REXX If room allows, support for REXX will be installed.

HELP BOOTOS2 will try and add basic OS/2 Help support.
(PM and WPS only).

*NOTE* Only the base OS/2 Help SubSystem will be
installed. Specific help files will not be
available unless the user installs them.

VDM Support for Virtual Dos Machines (VDMs) will added.

*NOTE* This option can not be used when the target
drive is a floppy disk on OS/2 systems prior
to OS/2 WARP V3

*NOTE* When VDM support is installed on a Minimal
system (Text Only), to start a new VDM session
press the Ctrl-D key combination. This will
invoke a new VDM session.

VGA Normally for a PM or WPS type install the video support
on the Target drive will be the same as the active OS/2
system from which BOOTOS2 is run. The VGA option can
be used to override this and force BOOTOS2 to install
basic VGA mode video support; this is useful if your
active OS/2 system has installed a Video adapter that
BOOTOS2 does not yet support.
(PM and WPS only)

NOTE: If the BOOTOS2 install completes sucessfully,
but when you IPL the Target system you get a
"C000005" error in PMMERGE, the most likely
cause of this is incorrect video support. Try
using the VGA option to resolve it.

LX When creating a floppy disk based boot system, this option
will use the LXLite compression program to reduce the size
of all OS/2 excutables, allowing more files to fit on each
boot disks.

If specified, all OS/2 files with a file extension of EXE,
COM, DLL, SYS, IFS, ADD, FLT and DMD, as well as OS2KRNL,
will be compressed using LxLite.

*NOTE* The files LXLITE.EXE and LXLITE.CFG must be located
on the same directory as BOOTOS2.EXE

You can get the current version of LXLITE from various
OS/2 FTP sites; one such site is

http://www.leo.org/pub/comp/os/os2/leo/systools/

BOOTOS2 requires a minimum of LXLITE v1.2.1

SYSED Add support for the OS/2 System Editor (E.EXE)
(PM and WPS only)

SWAP= For a TYPE=PM or TYPE=WPS install, the default value for
the SWAPPATH is the ROOT directory of the target BOOT
system. You can use this option to place the Swap File in
a different directory.

TEMP= For certain types of installs, BOOTOS2 will create a temporary
directory named BOS2TEMP in order to have a place to store files
copied from the install disks. The TEMP option allows you to
specify an alternate path to use as the temporary directory.

FILE= This option can be used to specify alternate files to be
installed by BOOTOS2. The value of the option is the
fully qualified file name of a Text file; BOOTOS2 will
examine each line in the file as follows:

- If the line is blank it will be ignored

- If the line starts with a '*', it will be considered
a comment line and will be ignored

- If the line starts with a '=', all text past the '='
will be considered the fully qualified file name of
a file BOOTOS2 will copy to the \OS2 directory of the
target drive.

- All other lines will copied unchanged to the CONFG.SYS
file on the Target drive.

NOTE: for now, you *must* include the full path name with
the file name.

TRACE Use this option to create a Trace of the Install Process.
A file called BOOTOS2.LOG will be created that will
contain a complete record of the requested BOOT System
Install process. By default the LOG file will be created
on the same physical directory the BOOTOS2.EXE program
resides on. You can optionally specify an alternate path
and file name for the LOG file;

e.g. TRACE=drive:\path\file

FORMAT You can use this option to have BOOTOS2 force a certain
type of Format (i.e. FAT, HPFS, or NONE) to the target
drive. This is usefull for automated processes.

QUIET This will run BOOTOS2 such that no output is produced.
This is also useful for automated processes. You can
use the TRACE option to maintain a record of the install.
Please note that because BOOTOS2 can't prompt the user
to ask about formating the target drive, if you don't
explicitly specify the FORMAT option, FORMAT:FAT will
be assumed.

The following 5 options can be used to force BOOTOS2 to assume
that the specified OS/2 v2.x version is the 'active' level.
Usually BOOTOS2 will determine this automatically by examining
the SYSLEVEL.OS2 file, so you shouldn't need to use these
options under normal circumstances. However, there are times
when the SYSLEVEL.OS2 file can become corrupted, making it
impossible for BOOTOS2 to determine the active system level.
You can use these options to get around this problem.

GA200 OS/2 2.00 GA
SP200 OS/2 2.00 SP
GA210 OS/2 2.10 GA
SP211 OS/2 2.11 CSD SP
MR211 OS/2 2.11 Manufacturers Refresh
GA300 OS/2 WARP V3.0
GA400 OS/2 WARP V4.0

NOTE: OS/2 WARP v3.0 will present itself as OS/2 v2.30.
OS/2 WARP v4.0 will present itself as OS/2 v2.40.

You must run BOOTOS2 from an existing OS/2 V2, V3 or V4 system. The BOOTOS2 program will analyze your system and create a BOOT system that is specific for it. For example it will determine if your system supports features such as HPFS or SCSI and add the appropriate support for it. Because of this, a BOOT disk created for a specific workstation will not necessarily work correctly on a different workstation.

If you install the BOOT system on a Hard Disk Drive, you'll probably want to
also install the OS/2 BOOT Manager and add the BOOTOS2 system to it.

Please note that the BOOT system installed with this release of BOOTOS2 does not support Windows. A future release of the program might do so
if enough users want it (and I figure out how).

The file BOOT2X.ZIP contains the following files:

BOOTOS2.EXE * The OS/2 BOOT System Create Utilty for OS/2 V2.0
BOOTOS2.ABS * Short Abstract descriping the Function of BOOTOS2
BOOTOS2.DOC * Documentation for BOOTOS2
BOS2U200.INI * User INI file needed for OS/2 2.0
BOS2S200.INI * System INI file needed for OS/2 2.0
BOS2U210.INI * User INI file needed for OS/2 2.0+SP and OS/2 2.1
BOS2S210.INI * System INI file needed for OS/2 2.0+SP and OS/2 2.1
BOS2U300.INI * User INI file needed for OS/2 WARP V3
BOS2S300.INI * System INI file needed for OS/2 WARP V3
BOS2U400.INI * User INI file needed for OS/2 WARP V3
BOS2S400.INI * System INI file needed for OS/2 WARP V3
BOS2REXX.EXE * Stub Module for REXX Support
BOS2SHL.EXE * Protect Shell program for use instead of SYSINST1
BOS2DD.SYS * Device Driver for 2DISK=A install
ELEP2F.ZIP * OS/2 Entry Level 3270 Emulation Program
LICENSE.TXT * IBM License Agreemen

CONTACT AUTHOR:

Kenneth A. Kahn, P/390 Software Development,
IBM Corp.
Poughkeepsie N.Y.
CompuServe - 71333,2526
E-mail adress: kenkahn@us.ibm.com

@Macarlo, Inc.
@Macarlo's Shareware & Web
OS/2
Java Lobby Member
Java Site Accredited

[TOP] [HOME] [INDEX]