Sounds like you want something like a FreeBSD version of DOS Linux. See http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/index.html. How do they overcome this problem?
Greg At 02:45 PM 5/19/99 -0700, Carlos C. Tapang wrote: >Thanks to all who pitched in their input to this issue. Most users of my >system are running Windows and don't want to have to reformat or repartition >their hard disk. So I am stuck with the DOS file system. I think the best >solution is to have my users use a FreeBSD boot floppy. The floppy will have >/boot/loader which I will point to the DOS-formatted hard disk in which the >kernel resides. > >>The flags and values in the BIOS data area would not necessarily >>be at their default values, so restoring the vectors might itself >>crash the BIOS (because it's reconfigured itself for the present >>vectors/drivers, not the default ones). >> >>Some hardware (eg. popular SCSI controllers) also configures itself >>differently when it finds it's running on DOS/Windows. This kind >>of thing in any scenario in which we start DOS then kill it would >>have the potential to seriously confuse matters. >> >>Incidentally (to correct a point made in an earlier post) *all* >>versions of DOS since 1.x have changed interrupt vectors. This is >>not a DOS 7+ phenomenon. The reason FBSDBOOT.EXE is deprecated at >>this stage is that, in the future, VM86 will be increasingly relied >>on by FreeBSD. And FBSDBOOT.EXE has *never* worked reliably in a >>VM86 context. >> >>-- >>Robert Nordier >> >> >>To Unsubscribe: send mail to majord...@freebsd.org >>with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message >> > > > >To Unsubscribe: send mail to majord...@freebsd.org >with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majord...@freebsd.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
