Forum: EasyBoot
Topic: i need a modified ezboot.com
started by: Medox
Posted by Medox on Aug. 17 2008,22:38
hello all, especially the ezboot.com assembler(s)... here's my problem (wish):

how do i change the ezboot.com file (e.g. with a hex editor, debug.exe, etc.) to come back to a submenu .ezb or to some other .ezb menu file from some other folder (WITHOUT going through the first boot menu that shows up). something like this: a floppy image with 2 ezboot.com files: one (the original) to return to the first/"big" menu and a modified ezboot.com to return to some other folder with some other .ezb menu in it.

i've tried many workarounds but nothing worked... my last version of the project (prototype) has one first menu linked directly to cdshell (it jumps to the cdshell menu after 1 sec), then cdshell shows a menu to select between ezbmenu1 and ezbmenu2... and after this everything goes back to the first .ezb by runing the original ezboot.com or any other hex edited versions that i've done... :(

now i have something like this:

CODE
                               -> 2nd .ezb -> 3rd .ezb -> 1st .ezb
                            /  
1st .ezb -> cdshell
                            \
                               -> 3rd .ezb -> 1st .ezb


but i want something like this:

CODE
                                                    -> ezboot.com -> 1st .ezb
                                                 /
1st .ezb -> 2nd .ezb -> dos menu
                                                 \
                                                    -> ezbootX.com -> 2nd .ezb


(or maybe a 3rd, 4th, etc...)

it would make my big project complete! please take your time to change or explain how to change it. thanks!

Posted by Medox on Aug. 19 2008,16:37
OK, I was tired when I wrote my previous... I'll explain better now:

I had something like this:

CODE
                              -> 2nd .ezb -> DOS GAME -> ezboot.com -> 1st.ezb
                           /  
1st .ezb -> cdshell
                           \
                              -> DOS GAME -> ezboot.com -> 1st .ezb


But I wanted something like this:

CODE
                                                                  -> ezboot.com -> 1st .ezb (-> loop)
                                                               /  
1st .ezb       -> cdshell menu -> DOS GAME
(many titles)    (one of them)                     \
                                                                  -> ezboot.com (mod) -> cdshell menu (-> loop)


BUT ANYWAY !!! I've found a good workaround: (maybe not a perfect one but still...)

CODE
                                                                  -> ezboot.com -> 1st .ezb (-> loop)
                                                               /  
1st .ezb       -> cdshell menu -> DOS GAME
(many titles)    (one of them)                     \
                                                                  -> GRUB4DOS -> workaround .ezb -> cdshell menu (-> loop)


This is how it works:

cdshell starts a game from it's fancy menu (passing parameters to memdisk to start the coresponding label in the .ima autoexec.bat) and after I close the DOS game/app it goes to a menu that asks if I want to go back to the first easyboot menu (via ezboot.com) or to go back to the cdshell menu (via GRUB4DOS)... Selecting the last option starts a "fake" easyboot menu ("2nd .ezb", I'll explain later this post) witch reloads the cdshell...

Why not reloading cdshell directly? Because cdshell doesn't support coming back from dos and using grub4dos to reload cdshell crashes it... But I still have to learn more about grub4dos, maybe I'll find out how to reload cdshell directly from dos via grub4dos but until then the "fake" easyboot menu does his job very good!

The "fake" easy boot menu look like this:
- 16 colors screen mode, everything BLACK
- it goes to cdshell's .bin file after 1 second (WaitTime)
- no logo image, no background image

You could also make a .ezb submenu, accessed from .ezb menu and with the grub4dos workaround you could return to the submenu directly, nice isn't it ?! But for this you must run grub4dos after the selected title in the submenu exits.

GRUB4DOS configuration: (in my case)
after choosing to reload the "fake" RELOAD.EZB / cdshell it reads this line from the autoexec.bat (grub.exe included in my booting .ima):

CODE
grub.exe --config-file="--commandline;chainloader --force /RELOAD/RELOAD.EZB;boot"


Have fun & succes ! ;)