From: muta...@gmail.com   
      
   I guess I could just have 2 hard disks (ie USB sticks).   
   One with BOOTX64.EFI on it.   
      
   And PDOS/386 should just gracefully accept being   
   booted from the second hard disk, which only   
   contains IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS and COMMAND.COM.   
      
   I have had some really strange results from real   
   hardware.   
      
   If I put two PDOS USB sticks in, only the boot is   
   accepted. The only one's MBR can't be read, either   
   via CHS or LBA.   
      
   But if I put in a PDOS and some USB stick from the   
   wild, the wild one is read fine. The only strange thing   
   was that the CHS of the VBR was 0/1/1 as expected,   
   and is read, but is zeros. The LBA of the VBR was 31   
   from memory, and works, with an AA55 signature.   
      
   I think the deciding factor is more likely to be the   
   fact that the wild USB is only 2 GB and untouched,   
   while the others are bigger and have a 1 GB   
   image burnt. I don't want the 2 GB stick disturbed as   
   it is now a reference. So I've asked for more USB   
   sticks to be bought so that I can suss out this machine.   
      
   But it's a fantastic result so far - I have found a machine   
   willing to give me 2 hard disks on USB sticks.   
      
   Oh, one other thing is that 5 retries for reading a sector   
   is not always enough. 500 is enough, but makes the   
   boot process take several minutes with the unrecognized   
   drives.   
      
   And one other thing is that I get a return code of 1,   
   invalid parameter, when trying to find the hard disk   
   status of the USB sticks that are being presented   
   as hard disks. So I have to ignore that and continue   
   anyway.   
      
   And VHD can be burnt by Win32 Disk Imager, but I   
   need to select "all files" instead of the default *.img.   
      
   It's a fantastic result.   
      
   BFN. Paul.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)