Re: Running HGST's DFT utility from a flash drive

[Celejar <celejar@gmail.com>]

On Tue, 20 Oct 2020 20:46:20 +0300
Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net> wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 20, 2020 at 01:15:48PM -0400, Celejar wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I'm tearing my hair out trying to get HGST's Drive Fitness Test utility
> > to run:
> ...
> > I've tried so many different things and wasted so much time, but have
> > still not succeeded:
> > 
> > 1) Copying the IMG straight to a flash drive:
> 
> Boot the thing via PXE. Syslinux can emulate a floppy from it's image
> (memdisk module).

I had started thinking about PXE after my initial post. I tried PXE
(from my OpenWrt router) - it was actually fairly easy to setup,
following the guide here:

https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/services/tftp.pxe-server

And the thing actually runs! But I get the same errors described here :(

https://www.ultimatebootcd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2528

To be more precise, here's what I get:

**********

HIMEM: DOS XMS Driver, Version 3.15 - 05/30/94
Extended Memory Specification (XMS) Version 3.0
Copyright (C) IBM Corp. 1988, 1994

ERROR: Unable to control A20 line!
	XMS Driver not installed.

IBM RAMDrive version 3.10 virtual disk C:
RAMDrive: Extended Memory Manager not present
HMA not available: Loading DOS low
Microsoft (R) Mouse Driver Version 8.20
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp. 1983-1992.
Copyright (C) IBM Corp. 1992-1993.
Mouse driver installed
Loading DFT ...

Insert diskette for drive B: and press any key when ready

<keypress>

Error RAMDRIVE not found or wrong RAMDRIVE size.

Insert diskette for drive A: and press any key when ready

<keypress>

A:\DFT>

**********

and that's it. Is this just a limitation of memdisk's emulation? Any
further ideas?

Celejar