On Thu, 26 Jul 2012 08:57:44 PDT, DrTeeth
wrote:
>On Wed, 25 Jul 2012 17:25:46 PDT, just as I was about to take a herb,
>Tom Cole
>
> disturbed my reverie and
>wrote:
>
>>Certainly. I use Grub4DOS.
>
>I did some Googling earlier on and found http://www.sarducd.it/ ,
>which looks as if it could fit the bill. It seems to use the ISOs
>without having to 'extract' them. Will read up on grub4dos. Thanks for
>the pointer. Any links that you have found useful would be grateful,
>even though I have found a fair few already

.
Several years ago there was a post in the old version of these forums
from 'mudcrab' giving this link:-
http://www.themudcrab.com/acronis_grub4dos.php
This got me started down the Grub4DOS path.
I found these other resources:-
Guide - http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm
Latest Downloads -
http://code.google.com/p/grub4dos-chenall/downloads/list
Forum with a wealth of information - http://reboot.pro/forum/66/
To format the flash drive to make it bootable I use fbinst rather than
grubinst, as the resulting flash drive seems to boot on a wider
selection of computers. (Google 'fbinst grub4dos' for more info.)
You can create your menu by setting up a simple text file with entries
such as:
title 4 Image for Linux - Character
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /isos/ifl.ISO
map /isos/ifl.ISO (hd32)
map --hook
chainloader (hd32)
You can also load from Floppy images thus:
title 10 MS DOS 98SE
errorcheck off
map (hd1) (hd0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
errorcheck on
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /isos/msdos98s.img
map /isos/msdos98s.img (fd0)
map --hook
chainloader (fd0)+1
rootnoverify (fd0)
Or load from hard disk:
title 0 Existing Windows (Hard Disk)
errorcheck off
map (hd1) (hd0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map --hook
errorcheck on
chainloader (hd0)+1
There was a bit of a learning curve with Grub4DOS, but I like the
flexibility of being able to load from a variety of sources, and other
facilities such as being able to load a compressed image, having
sub-menus, and being able to set default menu items with timeouts.
Also my one-menu system works without alteration when run from either
CD or Flash Drive.