AFROS Live CD

AFROS Live CD is a bootable CD with a small collection of GNU/Linux software, ARAnyM and the AFROS. It boots and runs completely from CD, does not write anything to the harddrive and so is safe to try out. It is meant as a demo version of ARAnyM/AFROS. It is not the dreamed Installation CD of ARAnyM yet (although it could be modified to work so).

The underlying Linux kernel and related software provide the CD autoboot, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. ARAnyM plus AFROS provide our familiar and favourite TOS/FreeMiNT/GEM operating environment. It's all integrated seamlessly and after PowerOn boots straight to the Teradesk (GEM desktop).

AFROS Live CD is distributed in the form of a CD ISO image which is the usual way of distributing CDs electronically. The ISO image file can be burnt on a CD-R/RW and so you'll get an exact copy of the AFROS Live CD I created on my machine. You can download it from this server (URL updated 2004/09/24).

Approximate minimum system requirements:

Intel-compatible CPU (i486 or later)
at least 64 MB of RAM
bootable CD-ROM drive, or a boot floppy and standard CD-ROM (IDE/ATAPI or SCSI)
standard SVGA-compatible graphics card
serial or PS/2 standard mouse or IMPS/2-compatible USB-mouse

AFROS Live CD starting process:

Set up the BIOS of your computer to boot off the CD, put the CD in the drive, and power on the computer. If your computer doesn't support the CD boot option, you have to use a boot floppy disk and copy the KNOPPIX/boot.img on it (use rawrite as in the KNOPPIX/mkfloppy.bat example).
At the "boot:" prompt either press the [Enter] key or (if you have a problem booting the default configuration) press the [F2] key, read all the options and then give them a try.
In the xsetup routine choose either of the X servers (Xvesa) and answer the two questions about your mouse. Then select the X-Windows desktop resolution (800x600 or more) and then the color depth (choose 16 bit). At last ignore the dpi setting (say [No] to the question).
Now you should be in the AFROS standard desktop. The Pause key (in standard ARAnyM configuration) opens up the configuration GUI. When you want to quit the ARAnyM simply remove CD and reset the computer any time.

AFROS Live CD configuration:

fVDI resolution and/or color depth change: open up the C:\FVDI.SYS (double click it and select Edit), locate the "01r aranym.sys mode 800x600x16@72" line, comment it out and uncomment one of the other prepared lines (or just make up your own). Then reboot the AFROS.
The ARAnyM Config GUI is unfinished yet so changes to ARAnyM config must be done outside of ARAnyM in the .aranym/config file. When you quit ARAnyM you should be able to edit the file with one of the supplied GNU/Linux editors (in the future this shouldn't be necessary as I am working on the Config GUI as you read this).
DSL site (AFROS Live CD is based on the DSL) might give you some hints about preserving the changes you've made to the AFROS disk image or ARAnyM configuration (you might also want to read File Restoration -> HowTo in the X11 desktop). Note that this is untested by me and might be dangerous. Try it on your own risk only.

Please always keep in mind that this Live CD is first beta release and it is mainly a demo of what can be done with ARAnyM and AFROS. Real ARAnyM (properly installed on a fine-tuned Linux setup) runs much faster and better (especially the graphics is way faster, and when the just-in-time CPU compiler is enabled also the overall speed is ten fold better). If you are interested in ARAnyM consider installing it on your harddrive properly. For further discussion we have the mailing list.