On the website, I've recently fixed the link to Reanimatolog's Bootable CD Wizard module (version 2.0a1), and at last the old Boot Scriptor website is now available through the Extra Stuff menu at the top of this page.

Have Fun!

Also, Reanimatolog has updated his Bootable CD Wizard module to work with CD Shell 2.1. The showgif functionality is now included in the main BCDW module. You can find them at his website, here.

• Mouse support has been added.
• Password support using MD5 one-way encryption.
• Improved internationalization via loadable lilo keymaps.
• Diskemu can now emulate multiple floppy images at once, and emulate a floppy without booting it (noboot mode).
• Reverse and selective input parsing, for more powerful yet faster running scripts.
• Updated/new interface modules for isolinux (memdisk), Ranish Partition Manager, and Memtest86+.
• Ability to neatly pack all CD Shell files into an iso, so only one file need be placed on your disc.
• Lots and lots of bugfixes.

To go along with the new release there have been some updates and additions to the website. If you look around in the menus, you'll see:

• A new, darker site style, deviantART, inspired by the website of the same name.
• User manual updated to incorporate the changes since the last stable release.
• Working mail list sign up page.
• Links to related websites.
• A new development manual, for people interested in programming custom modules.

The features that were new in build 17 have been pushed into a new series of betas for the next minor version (2.1) of CD Shell. This is the version scheme I should have employed back in June, so the main focus of this release is the correction of this mistake. The strange disc I/O bug introduced in the last release may still be present, unfortunately.

New features in version 2.1.0b are as follows: the isolinux module has been updated to version 2.11, a function to calculate the length of a string has been added, some syntax highlighting definition files have been added to the /tools folder, and various bugfixes.

Now on to the goodies. :) The change in this release that will probably have the most impact, is that lines are now scanned for variables from right to left, instead of left to right as they were previously. The major benefit of this is that you can now build variable names, so that you can do things like have $menuOption$number expand to $menuOption43, and have that expand to some crazy menu option. I guess you can kind of look at it as one way to build simplistic arrays.

Unfortunately this comes with some side effects, the most obvious one is that the $< escape sequence (used to delimit variable names) becomes pretty much useless. Now you can do $(variable_name) to achieve the same effect. See the documentation for the new $lastChar variable for an example of this.

Normally this reverse scanning would slow down script processing noticably, but I was able to offset this by making what turned out to be a very significant optimization. Large scripts that previously ran slowly under emulation are now a lot faster.

The other big change is the addition of the $MD5 variable. Yes, you can now generate secure passwords for your menu options, so that it becomes a lot more difficult for some evil person to use your CD Shell disc for malice. Nothing will stop someone from mastering his/her own disc with the protection removed, but at least now it's not as simple as opening up your script in a text editor and jotting down the password. Just for fun I plugged the MD5 algorithm into the CD Shell Module API, so if for some reason you're writing a module that can benefit from MD5, it's available to you. I've updated Paul Wabno's awesome password script (in the /boot/samples folder) to show how to use $MD5.

The other changes made were a bugfix, and the isolinux module has been updated once again thanks to H. Peter Anvin. He's now up to version 2.10, so see his website for what's new.

This release features a semi-big new feature: mouse support. Before anyone gets too excited though, there are a couple of caveats. First of all, the mouse cursor is only visible in text mode. I don't know when and if I'll get around to adding support for the two graphics modes, so my advice would be not count on it in the immediate future. Secondly, only PS/2 mice are supported. My system has a USB mouse, but there's a handy option in the motherboard BIOS which enables PS/2 mouse emulation. Hopefully most systems out there can do that as well. Serial mice and native USB mice are not supported, and most likely never will be.

So now that the preliminaries are out of the way, I suppose what naturally follows is how to use the thing. Well you're going to want to first test the $mouse variable to see if your mouse is detected and supported. Then set $mouseVisible to 1 so you can see the cursor. From there, there are several variables you can use to monitor button status and cursor position. Lastly, but not leastly, there's the new mgetkey command that works the same as getkey, except that it will fall through on a mouse event (motion or button activity). There's a new script in the samples folder called mouse.scr which shows how to use all this stuff.

Make sure you read up on all the documentation before you get started. It's scattered around the website so remember: look for the RED boxes, those are the ones with beta documentation. Also a good point of reference is always the change log.

Have fun!

Also some changes were made since 2.0.11 that broke CWP's CD Shell Hider, so after some coordination we've managed to get it working again. You can find it here or here (requires version 2.0.14 or later of CD Shell). Thanks, CWP!

I've updated the command reference to include beta commands. All beta commands will be in red so you can easily tell them apart. There's an entry in there for the new Keymap command, and an updated reference for the Diskemu command.

The other change is that the isolinux module has been updated to version 2.09 of H. Peter Anvin's excellent Linux loader and floppy emulator.

Other not-so-experimental changes are in the diskemu module. The first physical floppy drive now correctly maps to B: under DOS. Also you can now use the keyword "noboot" to tell diskemu to emulate but not boot the floppy disk. One use for this feature is to emulate a SCSI or RAID driver disk required by Windows Setup.

Not much has changed since build 10, but there is one major item. I've changed the /cdsh folder to /boot. I hope this doesn't hurt anyone real bad, but it was suggested to me and I thought it made a lot of sense. Perhaps it should even be standardized upon by all of the bootable CD/DVD utilities. If this causes a major problem for anyone, please let me know about it.

There were also some updates made to the included sample scripts (thanks DoctorXP!) and the isolinux module was updated to version 2.08. Other than that, everything else is the same.

It will look the best in Mozilla/Firebird/Netscape7, works ok in Internet Explorer, and admittedly may have problems in Opera (working on it). The menu is unfortunately broken in Safari, and will remain that way for now since Milonic's DHTML Menu 5 is not free, as their previous version was.

Here's some new things you can see if you click around:

• Site design is prettier (IMO).
• Full documentation for CD Shell.
• Many user-submitted scripts, modules, etc. are available.
• Donation link on the contact page, if you're feeling generous.

• Site map for Safari users, and anyone else who can't use the menu.
• Documentation for CWP's CPU Identification Module.
• Developer documentation (e.g., CD Shell Module M.3 format).
• Links to related sites page.
• Credits page.

Secondly, another user 'CW Palace' has created a module and scripts to determine the processor type of the machine CD Shell is running on. This has been requested before as a way to select a proper Linux kernel to load. You can find CPUType, including sources, at his website under the downloads section.

Thanks guys!

• Isolinux module updated to match H. Peter Anvin's 2.05 version.
• Support added for alternative VGA fonts (see here).
• Support added for true-color graphics on VMWare.
• Splash images now go in the folder /cdsh/graphics, and are now called splash.bmp and splash.csi (cleaning up the /cdsh folder).

Ahmad Hisham has generously provided some excellent example scripts for others to learn from. They look great and are a good example of what can be accomplished with CD Shell. You can find them in the folder /cdsh/samples/doctorxp.

I've also put a lot of work into the makefiles, and tested assembling CD Shell on Windows using Win32 make and some unknown version of make on Solaris. It should now be easy for anyone to assemble CD Shell from its sources by issuing the command 'make -f makefile.win'

I've been informed we need a string comparison function for comparing variables. Look for it in an upcoming build.

CD Shell is the new name for the Boot Scriptor program. Many things in this version are carried over from Boot Scriptor 1.2, but there are a lot of changes and most scripts from Boot Scriptor 1.2 will not work with CD Shell. Most of the changes revolve around the addition of two new features: variables and command predication (if/then/else). There is a readme file included which explains the changes in detail, or you can look here.