Bootable USB with a picture

[anselmo]

Hello, I am new to the forums and I'd like to ask for help on a task that was given to me. I need to make a bootable USB that boots into a picture or photo. I've tried fiddeling with MS-DOS on a VM and managed to get it working. The problem is that I can't make a USB flashdrive with DOS or FreeDOS. I've tried Rufus, UNetBootin, that HP USB tool and I can't seem to actually make it work. If anyone knows an app that has this pre-configured or how to make a bootable MS-DOS flashdrive, I would appreciate it. Someone told me that I should probably use Hiren's Boot CD, but I've used it little and barely know how to use half of its features. I would appreciate alot if someone could help me. By the way, if this is in the wrong section, please, someone move it into the right one, or tell me how to do it. 

Thanks, 

Anselmo

[Electronics Wizardy]

Why not just have linux on a usb that auto runs a program. You can also do this with window to go. Id stay away form dos here.

[Crunchy Dragon]

So just to clarify, you're trying to make a USB drive boot to an image to install on your MS-DOS virtual machine?

[anselmo]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Why not just have linux on a usb that auto runs a program. You can also do this with window to go. Id stay away form dos here.

I have very little experience with Linux. If you could help me with the commands... The idea is that it just boots straight into a picture, no GUI or CLI. 

[anselmo]

1 minute ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

So just to clarify, you're trying to make a USB drive boot to an image to install on your MS-DOS virtual machine?

No. I need something, to just boot a picture. Imagine turning on the computer, inserting a flash drive, select it as your boot device and display a photo. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, anselmo said:

I have very little experience with Linux. If you could help me with the commands... The idea is that it just boots straight into a picture, no GUI or CLI. 

well the os under the hood will have a gui or cli, so you can't get rid of that.

 

Its super easy to run a program at start, look up that for linux, and just run a image viewer full screen at bootup.

[anselmo]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

well the os under the hood will have a gui or cli, so you can't get rid of that.

 

Its super easy to run a program at start, look up that for linux, and just run a image viewer full screen at bootup.

I am aware that underneat there is always a OS. In fact, I know that this is needed in order to display the picture. I will try to look it up. Would Arch be the most appropriate or Ubuntu Minimal or none of those two?

[Unimportant]

16 minutes ago, anselmo said:

Hello, I am new to the forums and I'd like to ask for help on a task that was given to me. I need to make a bootable USB that boots into a picture or photo. I've tried fiddeling with MS-DOS on a VM and managed to get it working. The problem is that I can't make a USB flashdrive with DOS or FreeDOS. I've tried Rufus, UNetBootin, that HP USB tool and I can't seem to actually make it work. If anyone knows an app that has this pre-configured or how to make a bootable MS-DOS flashdrive, I would appreciate it. Someone told me that I should probably use Hiren's Boot CD, but I've used it little and barely know how to use half of its features. I would appreciate alot if someone could help me. By the way, if this is in the wrong section, please, someone move it into the right one, or tell me how to do it. 

Thanks, 

Anselmo

Should work with Rufus, follow this simple guide https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/Creating_a_Bootable_DOS_USB_Stick

Make sure all the settings are the same. You need FAT32 for example as DOS does not know NTFS.

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, anselmo said:

I am aware that underneat there is always a OS. In fact, I know that this is needed in order to display the picture. I will try to look it up. Would Arch be the most appropriate or Ubuntu Minimal or none of those two?

Id just run ubuntu or debian, normally easier to use.

 

Really, just have a cron job at boot to run something like feh.

[anselmo]

Just now, Unimportant said:

Should work with Rufus, follow this simple guide https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/Creating_a_Bootable_DOS_USB_Stick

Make sure all the settings are the same. You need FAT32 for example as DOS does not know NTFS.

I followed that one and many more. Didn't work. Probably gonna try the Linux route. Fortunately VM's exist. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the bash programming.

 

[anselmo]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id just run ubuntu or debian, normally easier to use.

 

Really, just have a cron job at boot to run something like feh.

Okay. Thanks. Will download Ubuntu and try it. Unfortunately, the Internet here at home sucks. 4G Internet for the win...

[mariushm]

You could use FreeDos

 

Get FreeDOS (the usb lite installer)  : http://www.freedos.org/download/

make usb stick

copy a dos image viewer on the stick and the images (give them small names, maximum 8 letters and digits) .. i used to use Photodex SEA viewer but maybe pictview would work .. both are listed here : http://dosprograms.info.tt/graphics.htm

edit the autoexec.bat to launch the image viewer with the image as a command line parameter instead of launching the FreeDOS setup

 

[anselmo]

11 minutes ago, mariushm said:

You could use FreeDos

 

Get FreeDOS (the usb lite installer)  : http://www.freedos.org/download/

make usb stick

copy a dos image viewer on the stick and the images (give them small names, maximum 8 letters and digits) .. i used to use Photodex SEA viewer but maybe pictview would work .. both are listed here : http://dosprograms.info.tt/graphics.htm

edit the autoexec.bat to launch the image viewer with the image as a command line parameter instead of launching the FreeDOS setup

 

I've tried to put FreeDOS into the flashdrive with no success. But I'm still trying, while Ubuntu downloads.

[mariushm]

See https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/Creating_a_Bootable_DOS_USB_Stick

 

Unetbootin is here : https://unetbootin.net/

 

 

[anselmo]

I was able to finally boot DOS. Finally. Spent all day on this, finding image viewers, considering using batch files, etc. Finally. Thanks. Next time I'll give it a try in Linux. Thank you all so much.

[anselmo]

By the way, does anyone know how to close this topic, or at least mark it as solved?

[mariushm]

No need, just let it go and it will die by itself as members post other stuff on the forum.