Making a DOS start up diskette for patching DVD-RW firmware

[falberni]

Hi all,

So far I've always had Pioneer DVD writers and I've gotten by using DVRFlash. But now I'm looking into buying another writer and I'm investigating my option, cause for some writers you may have to flash from DOS. So, I'm trying to make a DOS start up diskette. I run Win XP SP2. I have three HD partitions and they are all NTFS.

I formatted a diskette and clicked on the option to make a DOS start up diskette. It made the diskette and I can use it to boot. But it dos not have CD ROM support on it. I have the following questions:

1. How do you make a DOS start up diskette with CD-ROM support?

2. Would No. 1 above be possible without having a FAT partition on the HD?

3. I have 2 HDs in the computer. The first HD has 2 partitions as "C" and "D". The 2nd HD has one partition as "E". I think the 1st HD has about 8MB space left on it that is not partitioned. Would it be possible to use the 8MB of unused space and partition it as FAT just to get some disk space for DOS to work properly? The reason I ask this question is that from my Win 98 days I remember DOS uses HD to write some files for CD-ROM support.

Thanks in advance for you help.

[Boba_Fett]

First and formost, I don't recall seeing any new DVD-+R burner REQUIRE DOS to flash an upgraded firmware. They should all have a windows flasher. If you actually do find a firmware that requires DOS (the bootdisk you made does have CD drivers), all you'll need is the firmware and the flasher.

When you have that, copy them to the DOS bootup disk and restart with your bootup disk still in the drive. Now when you boot up, you'll boot up to a A: prompt instead of booting into windows (If you still go into windows, your Boot Order in your BIOS is looking at your HDD first, you'll need to put your A: first in that case and switch it when you are done with this exercise). At this prompt, go ahead and type "DIR" to see the files on your floppy. Usually at this point what you have to do is type the exact name of your flasher and then the exact name of your firmware and press Enter (i.e. awdflash.exe 1008.bin). The flasher should then do its job.

Some firmwares might have different instructions so always look at the readme file that comes with your BIOS, firmware, whatever. Have fun...

[falberni]

Boba_Fett,

Thanks for the explanation. It cleared up things for me.