From: muta...@gmail.com   
      
   On Wednesday, July 14, 2021 at 1:22:04 PM UTC+10, Rod Pemberton wrote:   
      
   > I wonder if anyone has done this or something similar for DOS or even   
   > CP/M. I'm sure there are some diehards who won't give up DOS (or   
   > CP/M) even in the face of UEFI. Maybe, they already coded a UEFI-shim   
   > to drop out of LM and into RM, install a usable BIOS, then start up DOS   
   > (or CP/M). Worth a search?   
      
   Do any computer vendors allow you to flash a floppy disk   
   image? If I could set the computer to boot from floppy,   
   that would cover almost everything I want. I just get the   
   above floppy to boot the first hard disk.   
      
   And if someone really wants to boot a real floppy, they will   
   have to do the reverse, from a real hard disk, unless a   
   computer vendor is willing to let you flash a hard disk   
   image.   
      
   Actually, since I never use floppies anyway, maybe I can   
   burn a floppy image to USB stick, make the boot priority   
   to go to floppies-on-USB, and then what I need is for my   
   remaining USB sticks to appear as hard disk images,   
   and have priority over the internal hard disk.   
      
   Note that my experimentation with USB sticks on a real   
   laptop is that it accepts a (I think) 4 GB USB stick, burnt   
   with a 1 GB hard disk image, as a boot device, but not   
   as an extra drive. But a 2 GB USB stick, at its natural   
   size, is accepted as an extra drive, but only after the   
   internal hard disk. That's not a big deal, and it's currently   
   ignored by PDOS/386 anyway, since it is NTFS and   
   unrecognized, but it would be nice to leave the internal   
   hard disk last.   
      
   I think it will take less than 3000 lines of code to   
   reinstate the BIOS calls I care about too.   
      
   BFN. Paul.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)