Getting Started

Overview

The Caldera(TM) DR-DOS(TM) redistribution kit (RDK) allows you to easily implement DR-DOS in your particular environment with the ability to customize DR-DOS to suit your requirements. Read this guide to understand what is included in this kit and to understand the ways you might want to implement DR-DOS.

Read the section ``Customizing DR-DOS'' for a general overview of the process you go through when customizing DR-DOS to suit your requirements.

Read the section ``Example Implementations'', for examples of typical use cases for using DR-DOS in a solution.

Contents of the DR-DOS Redistribution Kit (RDK)

The DR-DOS redistribution kit includes the following:

This guide (DR-DOS Customization and Redistribution Guide)
Tools and script files to add or remove components from DR-DOS. These are located in the \OEM\SDKS\RDK directory on the CD.
DR-DOS User Guide (HTML and source files in FrameMaker* 5)
DR-DOS Quick Start Guide (HTML and source files in FrameMaker 5)
DOSBook source files and the tools required to build DOSBook

Customizing Caldera DR-DOS

You might want to add a graphical user interface (GUI) component or an extra driver program to DR-DOS, for example. If you want to customize DR-DOS before shipping it on your PC's, you need to follow the steps below:

Edit the script files to add or remove components from the DR-DOS file set. This procedure is described in Chapter 2, ``Customizing DR-DOS.''
Edit the printed documentation
When you add or remove components, you need to make sure that the printed documentation is edited accordingly to keep it up-to-date with the software. The source files for the DR-DOS User Guide and the Quick Start Guide are provided in FrameMaker* 5 format.
Edit the online documentation (DOSBook)
You also need to edit the online documentation to reflect any changes you make to DR-DOS. Full details of customizing DOSBook are provided in the Customizing DOSBook Guide.
Build the new CD or diskettes

After you have customized DR-DOS to suit your requirements, you need to build a new CD or set of diskettes. This procedure is described in ``Generating CD or Diskette Product Versions''.

Example Implementations

Refer to the following examples to help you understand the procedures for some of the various ways you can use this kit. You are pointed to the relevant documentation for more detailed information. The following example implementations are described:

Putting DR-DOS on a hard disk with a new PC

Booting from diskette then installing from CD

Booting from CD then installing from CD

Booting from the hard disk then installing from the hard disk
Embedding DR-DOS in ROM

Bundling DR-DOS with a New PC

You can put DR-DOS in your PC's as it is with no modifications, or you can customize it to suit your own requirements. The DR-DOS file set can be easily customized to suit the configuration of the PC. For example, you can pre-configure the driver and settings for a sound card, network card or CD-ROM driver.

There are several pre-install options recommended when bundling DR-DOS with a new PC. The following are the most likely cases:

Booting from diskette then installing from CD
Booting from CD then installing from CD
Booting from the hard disk or diskette then installing from hard disk

The following examples describe the procedures you must follow to bundle DR-DOS with a PC in the three configurations listed above. For each case, it is assumed that a CD-ROM driver will be added to the installation set. It also assumes that you have installed and booted DR-DOS and also copied the redistribution kit (RDK) on to your development machine.

Creating a Bootable CD

1. Create a disk with all the information on it that you want to be able to access once booted.

Do this either by using a floppy disk, creating a virtual disk in RAM using VDISK, or creating a hard disk partition. Make sure the disk is not larger than that which will fit on a CD.

NOTE: The DR-DOS bootable CD maker (BOOTCD.COM) currently only supports FAT 16 hard disk partitions and 1.44 M floppy disks.

The disk needs to contain all the software needed for booting such as a CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT file. If you want to access information on the CD-ROM that is not in the bootable image, ensure that the CD-ROM drivers are on the disk and that they are loaded from the CONFIG.SYS file and that NWCDEX.EXE is loaded from the AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

2. Use the program RAM2ROM.EXE to create an image file of the fileset you have created.

NOTE: You will need a lot of free space on the drive where the image is being created if you are creating a hard disk image.

The following examples for creating disk images do not include a partition table because they are not required for the floppy disk images. If you are creating a hard disk image, go to step 3 to add a partition table.

The following line would create a disk image of the A: drive.

RAM2ROM A: IMAGE.BIN

The following line would create a hard disk image of the extended logical partition E:

RAM2ROM E: IMAGE.BIN

The following line would create a hard disk image of the memory disk F:

RAM2ROM F: IMAGE.BIN

3. If you are creating a bootable CD with a hard disk image, a partition table must be added to the beginning of the image. Do this by using the COPY command and the supplied partition image HARDPART.BIN.

For example, the following command assumes that you are creating the new image file in the current directory. Adjust the paths according to where your tools are located and where you want to create the new image file:

COPY /B HARDPART.BIN+IMAGE.BIN BOOTIMAG.BIN

4. A CD-ROM image file must then be created (in the ISO format) using your normal CD-writer program. The file just produced (BOOTIMAG.BIN) and the file BOOTCAT.BIN (also supplied) must then be placed in this image as any other file would be. You must put the BOOTCAT.BIN on the CD first before adding the BOOTIMAG.BIN.

Ensure that all the files you wish to reside on the CD-ROM are included in this image.

5. Make the CD-ROM image bootable using the BOOTCD.COM program. For example:

BOOTCD CDIMAGE.ISO BOOTCAT.BIN BOOTIMAG.BIN

where CDIMAGE.ISO is the CD-ROM image, BOOTCAT.BIN is the boot catalog, and BOOTIMAG.BIN is the disk image.

If your bootable image is of a floppy disk, append /F to the end of the command line.

6. The CD-ROM image can then be burnt onto the CD in the normal way.

Overcoming Drive Letter Problems

When the CD-ROM boots from a hard disk image, the disk image becomes drive C:. This can be a problem if the user is expecting to use the physical hard drive as drive C: or if the bootable image installs software of any sort on to the hard disk. This software will think it is installing onto drive D: (the first physical hard disk), but after a reboot this becomes drive C:.

For these reasons, Caldera also supply a program called `DiskSwap' to swap the logical drive letters. DiskSwap will move all drive letters up one and then move the hard disk image on the CD-ROM to the end of the letter chain. For example:

drive D: becomes drive C:, drive E: becomes drive D: and drive C: (the CD-ROM hard disk image becomes drive E:.

NOTE: It is not advisable to use the DiskSwap program with floppy disk images.

Once the program has executed, the current drive will be changed to that of the CD-ROM hard disk image. (In the above example, this is drive E:).

NOTE: There are problems with just swapping the drive letters, for example:

1. If the program is called from a batch file (including AUTOEXEC.BAT) the batch file will no longer exist after the program has executed.

2. The COMSPEC environmental variable will point to the wrong drive.

3. Any low level disk access at the INT 13 level will not be affected. The first hard disk (80h) will be the CD-ROM hard disk image.

The first two of these problems can be solved by loading the DiskSwap program from the CONFIG.SYS at boot with the following command line:

INSTALL=C:\COMMAND.COM /c DISKSWAP

Any programs accessed after this must refer to the new drive location of the hard disk image.

NOTE: The only indication of the drive letter is that it is the current drive. We suggest that for this reason it is the last file loaded in CONFIG.SYS. The SHELL command can then point to the current directory for the COMMAND.COM file and the AUTOEXEC.BAT will also be loaded from the current directory.

Booting From Hard Disk Then Installing From Hard Disk

To support this configuration, it is necessary to pre-configure a partial DR-DOS installation on the hard drive, enough to boot the operating system and run the INSTALL program.

This method of distribution has the advantage that the user can easily configure a working system when setting up their machine. OEM specific components such as CD-ROM or sound card drivers can be pre-installed on the hard drive which avoids having to change the DR-DOS distribution media or create a separate drivers disk.

The following example describes the procedure for creating a distribution that boots from the hard disk and installs DR-DOS from the hard disk.

1. Create a primary partition using the DR-DOS FDISK utility. The DR-DOS FDISK will automatically format the partition.

2. Install the operating system boot files onto the hard disk using the SYS command. Use the CONFIG.SYS file in the \OEM\SDKS\RDK\HARDDISK directory on the CD as a template for the CONFIG.SYS file you must now create in the root of the hard drive.

The sample CONFIG.SYS has comments indicating where you would insert a CD-ROM driver, for example.

3. Copy the sample AUTOEXEC.BAT file from the \OEM\SDKS\RDK\HARDISK directory on the CD to the root of your target PC.

4. Copy the following files from the \DRDOS\INSTALL directory on the CD to the /DRDOS directory on the target PC.

EMM386.EXE
SETVER.EXE
COUNTRY.SYS
KEYB.COM
NWCDEX.EXE

5. Copy any OEM specific drivers to their target directories on the hard drive such as CD-ROM drivers, for example.

5. Ship the standard DR-DOS redistribution CD with each PC as a backup installation.

Embedding DR-DOS in ROM

You can embed DR-DOS into many devices, for example, entertainment devices, kiosks, PDA's, Internet phones, etc.

You can embed the DR-DOS operating system in your device using a ROM disk. There are two types of ROM disk you can create: FFF (Fixed File Format) or FAT. Using a FAT disk enables you to write to the disk. This can be useful to update your software in the device, for example. You can also use the DR-Flash software to embed your software using a flash file system. This method is recommended because of the read/write nature of flash devices.

Refer to the Embedding DR-DOS in ROM Guide or the Implementing DR-Flash Guide for more technical information.

Where to Go From Here

The next chapter describes how to modify the build components to suit your requirements and then build the new product version on CD or diskettes. Refer to the Customizing DOSBook Guide for more information about editing the online documentation.

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