MONKEY LINUX BOOT FLOPPY
This tutorial assumes that your floppy drive is known as the A:\
drive and that you’ve installed Monkey Linux in the C:\Linux directory.
If that’s not the case then you’ll have to make a few adjustments.
What I mean when I say “boot floppy” is not “rescue disk,” but “start
up” disk. In other words, a disk that you place in your floppy drive that
will boot up Monkey Linux when you turn on your computer. This method
makes life a little more easier and is actually necessary to do if you
installed Monkey on a computer running Windows Me. Basically we’ll be
making a DOS/Windows boot disk with a batch file that starts the Monkey
boot process for us, so we don’t ever have to fiddle with a DOS prompt.
I thought I was brilliant when I used this method to circumvent the “DOS prompt at boot time” problem in Windows Me. It turned out that, Jose C. Lacal, pioneered the Monkey boot floppy back in 1998 and posted it on www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Network/8907/mlinux_h.html. I snaked the instructions on creating the config.sys and autoexect.bat files and added them here, but you should still visit that site because it has plenty of Monkey Linux tidbits.
Let’s make this boot floppy from a DOS prompt, regardless of which DOS/Windows operating system (excluding Me/Nt/2000/XP) you’re using. Note that
Microsoft made efforts to phase out DOS in Windows Me, so Windows Me users must use a Windows 9X system disk to boot Monkey Linux. Access a DOS prompt, insert a disk into the floppy drive, and follow these instructions to create your boot disk:
1. Access your A:\ drive
C:\> a:
2. Make sure nothing important is on the floppy
A:\> dir
3. Format the floppy with the 'system disk' option
A:\> format a: /s
4. Change to the directory holding the DOS utilities
a) DOS/WINDOWS 3.X USERS
A:\> c:
C:\> cd c:\dos
b) WINDOWS 9X USERS
A:\> c:
C:\> cd c:\windows\command
5. Copy the following files to the floppy:
C:\...\> copy attrib.exe a:
C:\...\> copy chkdsk.exe a:
C:\...\> copy edit.com a:
C:\...\> copy fdisk.exe a:
C:\...\> copy format.com a:
C:\...\> copy mem.exe a:
C:\...\> copy more.com a:
C:\...\> copy mscdex.exe a:
C:\...\> copy scandisk.exe a:
7. Go back to your A:\ drive
C:\...\> a:
6. Create an autoexec.bat file for your floppy
A:\> edit a:\autoexec.bat
8. Add these lines to the file
@ECHO OFF
VERIFY OFF
C:
CD LINUX
LINUX
9. Save file and exit editor
Ctrl+F+S
Ctrl+F+X
10. Create a config.sys file for your floppy
A:\> edit a:\config.sys
11. Add these lines to the file
BREAK=OFF
BUFFERS=15
FILES=20
FCBS=4,4
LASTDRIVE=Z
12. Save file and exit editor
Ctrl+F+S
Ctrl+F+X
Congratulations. You now have a Monkey Linux boot disk. When you want to boot Monkey just place the disk in your floppy drive and
(re)start your computer.
For Windows 95/98 users, there is a much easier way to create a boot diskette. Simply open the Control Panel folder, double click Add/Remove Programs, and select the Startup Disk tab. To convert your startup disk to a Monkey Linux boot disk you’ll need to add the autoexec.bat and config.sys files from above.
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