Making the DoC bootable

Some have installed operating systems directly onto their doc by this innovative method. Others believe that this is a bad idea, since many docs have a 100,000 write lifespan. However, that does not seem to be an issue for Webplayers. See here.

First, you need to be able to boot without the doc. You can

Install a floppy, and use a boot disk.
Install a hard drive, which has been sys'd and has all your files.
This procedure assumes you have a hard drive....

First, install the hdd onto another machine as a slave, and set it up: Format /s first, then unnzip and copy webplayer drivers, and any OS setup. If the drive is large, use a full windows, otherwise, Windows lite might work (not tested.) Install the drive as primary onto the webplayer. Once this is booting, you can proceed.

Format drive D, transferring system files
Compress drive D, which should create a host drive H (the "real" D, while a compressed file gets remapped as D)
Move all the system files (including hidden ones) from the root of the newly compressed D to the root of H
Copy dblspace.ini from C to H, rename it to drvspace.ini, and edit it, changing "H,D0" to "H,C0"
Copy MSDOS.SYS from C to H (copy over the existing one) This file is really an INI file in Windows 98, and tells the system where to find Windows, among other things.

The DoC should now be bootable. Copy over anything you want before you remove the hard drive.

If step 4 is confusing, read this. You may see either drvspace.bin or dblspace.bin, or both, on your HD. These two files are identical (in Win98.) Whichever one is on drive H is the one you should rename the ini file to. E.g. on my installation there was a drvspace.bin on drive H and dblspace.ini on drive C (both .bin files were also on C.)

Now you can install any OS you like onto the Webplayer.

http://www.easyhome.in.th/tool/98lite3.zip to install windows ME. Here's a sample procedure.

Issues:

Possibly, the constant re-writing of the OS could cause an end-of-life for the DoC, although general feeling is that this is not the case. This propaganda from the chip manufacturer says the chip uses an advanced wear leveling algorithm to ensure long flash life for maximum usage.

Here are some more articles:


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