History of bootloaders

Posted Jul 8, 2024 19:17 UTC (Mon) by epa (subscriber, #39769)
Parent article: Giving bootloaders the boot with nmbl

Even in the days of LILO there was a no-bootloader option. The kernel image could be written directly to a floppy disk and booted directly.

History of bootloaders

Posted Jul 10, 2024 13:09 UTC (Wed) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (1 responses)

Didn't it work also for hard disks the same way, if the kernel was placed at the start of a MBR partition marked bootable? Although then you cannot really have any file system in the same partition.

History of bootloaders

Posted Jul 11, 2024 3:20 UTC (Thu) by jengelh (guest, #33263) [Link]

>Didn't it work also for hard disks the same way, if the kernel was placed at the start of a MBR partition marked bootable?

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tglx/hist...

The reason it “only work on legacy floppies -- not on IDE or USB devices” is because the loader code makes the int 13h calls with parameter DL=0x00 rather than DL=0x80.