═══ 1. General Help ═══

OS2BOOT 

OS2BOOT will create:

1.  A single diskette with a minimal OS/2 system installed.

2.  A Utility diskette with some OS/2 Commands and some Performance V3 commands 
    useful in an emergency situation.

3.  An OS/2 Emergency Partition with a minimal OS/2 system and the utilities 
    copied.  The partition must be created using OS/2's Boot Manager program 
    and must be at least 2.88MB large (4MB recommended).

Why should you create a boot diskette/partition?

OS/2 is a multitasking system which means that several programs may be active 
concurrently.  The most prevalent technique for achieving performance in a 
multitasking environment is to buffer and/or cache.  With a cache, one program 
might be active computing data contained in the cache while another is waiting 
for data as it is being retrieved from a disk.  A third might be writing data 
to a printer or a modem or Fax modem.

If the system crashes (a power failure is the most common reason), the data in 
the system may be left in an inconsistent state.  CHKDSK must be run with the 
FIX parameter.  In OS/2 Chkdsk (with the fix option) can't be run against the 
boot drive or the drive that houses chkdsk.  This is probably the main reason 
for having an emergency boot diskette.  Other reasons are for system wide 
backup/restore, or disk de-fragmentation.

You'll need three items to create an Emergency Boot Disk:

1.  An OS/2 Installation Diskette.

2.  An OS/2 Diskette 1.

3.  A High Density Formatted 3 1/2 inch Diskette or a Disk Partition created 
    with the OS/2 Boot Manager.  If you are using OS/2 Warp V3 - a 5 1/4 inch 
    HD diskette might work for the boot diskette.

In addition to the boot partition option, also new with this release is support 
for Stacker for OS/2.  That is, if you have Stacker for OS/2 on your system, 
the boot diskette/partition will recognize those partitions.


═══ 2. OS/2 Diskettes ═══

The OS/2 Installation diskette and the OS/2 Disk 1 come with every copy of 
OS/2.  If you bought the CD-ROM version these two disks were needed to boot 
your system when you first installed OS/2.

If you have lost or misplaced them - there are images on the CD-ROM.

IBM distributed a Service Pack for OS/2 2.1 - the disks for the Service Pack 
were labeled disk1 and disk2 instead of Installation disk and disk 1.

I have also seen the installation disk labeled as disk 0 in some beta releases.

With Performance V3, only a few files are needed from these diskettes.  In fact 
with OS/2 Warp the Installation diskette is not always needed.

From the Installation diskette OS2BOOT copies:

o   SYSINSTX.COM

From the OS/2 Diskette 1 OS2BOOT copies:

o   VTBL850.DCP

o   KEYBOARD.DCP (a smaller version than the standard OS/2)



═══ 3. Boot Diskette or Partition ═══

This is the output drive for OS2BOOT.

Specify the drive ID in the entry field.  The most common choice here would be 
a 3 1/2 inch diskette drive.  Place a HD formatted 1.44MB diskette into that drive.

If you are using OS/2 Warp V3 a 5 1/4 inch formatted 1.2MB diskette might work. 
This is a close fit.  OS2BOOT copies the least needed files toward the end - if 
space is exhausted.  This is not guaranteed, but it might work especially on 
systems that don't support HPFS.

If you are using OS/2 Boot Manager then you might want to create an emergency 
OS/2 Boot Partition.  First become familiar with the Boot Manager and create 
your partition scheme - this is not for everyone, so don't jump in unless you 
know what you are doing.  Creating an OS/2 boot partition will give you a very 
fast emergency OS/2 boot. 


═══ 4. BUS Type ═══

BUS Type 

Every computer system has an I/O BUS architecture often refered to as a BUS 
type.  Some have implemented multiple BUSes for I/O.  The BUS type OS2BOOT is 
looking for is either:

o   ISA - Industry Standard Arcitecture (AT Bus)

o   EISA - Extended ISA 

o   MCS - Micro Channel Architecture 

o 
OS/2 has different device drivers depending on the BUS type.  That's why OS/2 
needs two diskettes for it's boot sequence.


═══ 5. Stacker for OS/2 ═══

Stacker for OS/2

Stacker for OS/2 is a commercially available disk compression application for 
DOS and OS/2.

You may create a boot diskette and 


═══ 6. Begin ═══