Boot to DOS on Intel Macbook

[elvey]

There are 3 CDs I tried to boot.
The SpinRite one (commercial software; can't just give you a copy).
SystemRescueCD 1.0.4 downloaded and booted fine
CD ISO image of MHDD (ver4.6, off HDDguru.com) that is supposed to be bootable, but it wouldn't boot in my MBP.

I don't think it was download corruption problems; the SpinRite CD boots fine on a regular PC, as does the MHDD CD, but FYI:
$ md5 mhdd32ver4.6*
MD5 (mhdd32ver4.6.iso) = ab3971bf25ad333304509bcc5a1e11dc
MD5 (mhdd32ver4.6iso.zip) = f8e30535c025645e32d49cf75e18abf8


The MHDD CD failed to load himem.sys, but it did boot into some sort of DOS; I couldn't do anything but run 'dir'.

If I can put the 140K spinrite.exe on a dos boot CD that works on a macbook pro, I might have something.

And again, the linux os just runs directly on the machine. Perhaps you've never tried it, but I have; you can take a Windows XP install CD and boot an Intel mac off it; you'll get pretty far along in the install process too; not all the way, of course.

The MHDD CD is here:
http://hddguru.com/download/software/mhdd/mhdd32ver4.6iso.zip
(where i said it was: at
http://hddguru.com/, click on MHDD, then "Last version of MHDD, CDROM iso-image" links to it)

 

[MisterMe]

...

And again, the linux os just runs directly on the machine. Perhaps you've never tried it, but I have; you can take a Windows XP install CD and boot an Intel mac off it; you'll get pretty far along in the install process too; not all the way, of course.

...

You have a fundamentally flawed premise. You appear to be saying that a Mac can boot DOS because it can boot an operating system other than MacOS X. Linux has nothing to do with Windows or DOS. Boot Camp allows Intel Macs to boot Windows XP. However, Windows XP has only a distant relationship with DOS. Linux has none at all. It simply does not follow that the ability to boot Windows XP or Linux means that you can also boot DOS. You can't DOS on Mac hardware; only in a virtual environment like Parallels Desktop.

 

[elvey]

You have a fundamentally flawed premise.

You appear to be saying that a Mac can boot DOS because it can boot an operating system other than MacOS X.

I don't think I'm saying that at. Perhaps you misinterpreted "supposed to be bootable", by which I was simply differentiating from something that was "not supposed to be bootable", such as a pure data volume.

Linux has nothing to do with Windows or DOS. Boot Camp allows Intel Macs to boot Windows XP. However, Windows XP has only a distant relationship with DOS. Linux has none at all. It simply does not follow that the ability to boot Windows XP or Linux means that you can also boot DOS. You can't DOS on Mac hardware; only in a virtual environment like Parallels Desktop.

I'm not saying an Intel Mac can boot into and run DOS programs... I'm asking if/how it can be done, and providing the information I do know in order to try to get there. I'm asking if there are tricks to make it possible, and stating that I know there are tricks to make XP bootable. If those tricks (e.g. drivers and/or a BIOS compatability mode) don't exist/haven't been figured out yet, and comments here suggest they don't, then I have my answer.

 

[elvey]

The info on SpinRite itself is contradictory.

From the documentation:

SpinRite completely bypasses the system's motherboard BIOS software when used on any
standard hard disk system.

But the interview says SpinRite is very dependent on the BIOS.

 

[nixgeek]

EDCC and MisterMe are correct. DOS cannot be booted on any Mac, even an Intel Mac. DOS has NO support for EFI. GNU/Linux supports not only EFI on the Intel Macs, but OpenFirmware on the PowerPC Macs, hence why it boots there.

 

[nixgeek]

The info on SpinRite itself is contradictory.

From the documentation:

But the interview says SpinRite is very dependent on the BIOS.

BIOS...not EFI, which is what the Intel Macs use. The Intel Macs do not use the antiquated BIOS found in all PC motherboards for years now.

 

[Westy]

Sorry to necropost, felt like a trip down memory lane to time when I used to work with Macs.

If I can put the 140K spinrite.exe on a dos boot CD that works on a macbook pro, I might have something.

The DOS bootdisk I used was a Windows 95 bootdisk, which I got from: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm. It worked well enough to load ghost and copy a hard drive image across IPX. That was with a first generation MacBook Pro, and when boot camp was still in beta (of course that didn't matter since I used rEFIt to bootload)

I have a feeling that I had problems with the later models, but I can't remember if that was due to trying to create a ramdisk in dos or not. I don't have access to a Intel Mac anymore so I can't even test it.

Hope that helps.