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There are two ways of creating a bootable DOS filesystem:

The methods documented below will create a 2.88MB boot floppy (as 1.44 often hasn't enough space to hold the bios updates for modern motherboards).

DosBox

  • Make sure that you have a copy of DosBox? and a copy of a Windows 98 MS-DOS boot floppy.
  • Create a directory to hold the disk images, so that you don't lose them
mkdir ~/boot
cd ~/boot
  • Create a blank 2.88MB floppy image and format as FAT12
dd if=/dev/zero of=floppy.img bs=1024 count=2880
mkdosfs -vvv floppy.img

  • Launch DosBox
dosbox
  • Within DosBox, mount the directory containing the images, and issue a boot command to boot the Windows 98 MS-DOS boot floppy
mount c ~/boot
c:
boot win98s~1.img floppy.img

  • After Windows 98 MS-DOS boots, you will be dropped to a DOS prompt. Copy the system over to the B: disk as usual
sys b:

  • The new disk image should now be bootable, and fully compatible with memdisk (you don't really have a real 2.88MB floppy drive lying around, do you?)

sys-freedos.pl

You will need

  • mtools
  • mkdosfs from dosfstools
  • kernel.sys and command.com from the FreeDOS distribution (fdbasecd.iso:/freedos/setup/odin)

  • sys-freedos.pl from the sys-freedos tarball

    • This requires perl, and probably also nasm to build the boot block
# Make a file
truncate -s $(( 2880 * 1024 )) floppy.img

# Add FAT12 filesystem
mkdosfs -vvF12 -n DOSBOOTFLOPPY floppy.img

# Copy in the FreeDOS files
mcopy -i floppy.img kernel.sys command.com ::

# Hide them, for consistency
mattrib -i floppy.img +H +S ::kernel.sys ::command.com

# Install boot block
sys-freedos.pl --disk=floppy.img
  • The new disk image should now be bootable