Windows 98 on CD

Step 11: Build your CD

            With your favorite CD Creator software, hopefully Nero or EZCD creator, make a bootable CD.  Use floppy emulation and feed it your newly made floppy.  The default emulation settings work fine (To comfort you, here they are:  Load segment: 0x7c0, sector count 1, Floppy emulation 1.44MB).  Make sure the CD Project properties are as follows: 

                        Iso 9660

                Mode 1 (not 2/xa)

Boot CD’s are funky creatures and don’t like quirky things here. Leave Joliet and her friends alone and don’t try any fancy mode settings, either.

On your CD, then you need to place your two archives: windows.zip and programs.zip.  This makes a total of 4 files on the CD: 

BOOTCAT.BIN

BOOTIMG.BIN

PROGRAMS.ZIP

WINDOWS.ZIP

Once you have the project right, burn it (I didn’t close the first few CD, so I could change the images later).  After it’s burned try booting from it.  If you see your logo.sys come up, at least your boot image is right. About a minute or two later your system should be up in windows. If it worked, congrats. If not, try reading over everything again. The most important steps are moving ALL references to drive x, accessing the zips on y, editing io.sys, msdos.sys and preparing your ramdisk and archives correctly.

            When you have a CD that works perfectly, you can reburn the thing. A 45-50 MB CD can be cut with a carpet knife to a credit card shape (a little larger than my VISA, though) and carried in your wallet. By the way, if you do this, take a word of advice: epoxy or superglue the edges of the cd, and make a label, to protect it from scratching off the backside.   Pretty nifty little tool then.