HowTo: FreeDOS USB Bootdisk under Linux

Good for flashing BIOSes etc.

Instructions come from here: http://www.meta.net.nz/~daniel/blog/2009/06/10/creating-a-dos-usb-bootdisk-under-linux/

• Install qemu on your Linux system
• Download a FreeDOS image, for example Balder
• Find and check the partition of your USB drive, usually in ‘/dev/sd*’ (try cfdisk  /dev/sdc)
• Make file system: mkfs.msdos /dev/sdc1
• Mount FreeDOS image as A: drive and USB stick as C: drive: qemu -boot a -fda balder10.img -hda /dev/sdc
• Make the USB drive (C:) a bootable system drive: A:\> sys c:
• Copy all content of FreeDOS image to the new bootable USB drive: A:\> xcopy /E /N a: c:
• Check with: qemu -hda /dev/sdc

Done.

Sven L. M. Schroeder / April 2012