Re: SAVSYS to IMGCLG then to DVD on PC

I think it would be pointless to find an old ISERIES machine to do this on. Given all the new drives are DVD-RAM compatible, if I were going to do it this way I'd write them to the optical drive on the Power System directly.

First these are fabulously slow for burning but then so is the PC really. It's a DVD-RAM thing.
Second it's in the machine room or in my case 20 miles away in a datacenter. My PC is 2 ft right. :-)

I haven't tried the centerfield solution so I cannot comment on that. IMGBURN being free and it works I'm not pushed hard to find alternatives.


- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com
www.iInTheCloud.com

On 8/5/2013 9:36 AM, Jack Kingsley wrote:

Couple of things on this.

What about this product:

http://www.centerfieldtechnology.com/CDROM-Studio/

What about doing your saves to a dvd drive on the ISERIES.


On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 9:28 AM, Jim Oberholtzer <midrangel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

wrote:

One additional point for those of us that create our own distribution
media ( Which by the way saves many hours at upgrade time since you
don't have to apply PTFs after the upgrade ). If you need to use option
5, then "Work with licensed programs for target release" from the LICPGM
menu, the presence of the QIAM400 file will stop that option from
working, with a message that says something like, IBM did not create
this install media, you can't use it. I get by that by putting the most
recent LIC spin in the image catalog along with the custom DVD images.
Then you can build the installation script. ( remove it before you do
the actual upgrade or you loose the value of the newly created
distribution media ).


Jim Oberholtzer
Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects


On 8/5/2013 8:07 AM, DrFranken wrote:

HA! Yeah I thought that at some point myself, special hidden files or
some bootloader magic in a particular track in sector 0.

The secret seems to be this block of files:

QFILEBT
QFILELDS
QFILEMCD
QFILESCR
QIAMXXX

Where QIAMXXX is QIAM400 if you create the disk with LICPGM option 40 or
look at old version of the O/S.

Clearly if you use a standard burner or Jim's or My favorite program
those files will all be on the disk, that's not the issue. I believe the
issue is that at the time the disk is written certain parts of the
directory or other important things are not always done in a way that
the Power System firmware recognizes that there is anything at all on
the disk.

What I can tell you is that when it's going to fail, it's going to fail
FAST. You get like one blink on the DVD drive and done. It's as if the
disk is seen as completely empty or perhaps just blank. When it's going
to work you see multiple blinking fits and after 30 or so seconds it
goes on steady as these files are loaded to memory.

Popping the disk into a machine that is up and running and you CAN see
the files. I suspect there is less 'intelligence' in the firmware so it
spends less time interrogating the disk. With the O/S up and running it
either works harder or has code that recognizes a disk that's not
'perfectly' burned.

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com
www.iInTheCloud.com

On 8/5/2013 8:48 AM,rob@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

What makes a DVD bootable for IBM i? Is it the presence of certain

files

or are there certain hidden files like in the old days of diskettes

for

PC's?


Rob Berendt

--
This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing list
To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.