Re: [Freedos-user] DOs, or open source boot loaders?

[Karen L. <kle...@sh...>]

Hi,
I am going to simply find a way to use the boot loader Rockbox recommends 
for  installing the program on my IPod.
Even if not in my operating system, that will likely be less frustrating.
Kare



On Wed, 1 Apr 2026, tom ehlert via Freedos-user wrote:

> Unfortunately I misspoke ithis - a bit.
>
>>> Boot sequence of legacy BIOS with MBR formated storage media (eg. hard
>>> drive with formated MBR partition structures); 1) BIOS looks for MBR
>>> activate partition, 2) BIOS then looks for executable boot code, for
>>> example DOS IO.SYS/MSDOS.SYS, FreeDOS FDCONFIG.SYS/CONFIG.SYS, are then
>>> loaded into memory and executed.
>
>> Unfortunately this is complete nonsense.
>
>> 1) BIOS reads the first sector (512 Byte) on the disk and executes it.
> THIS *is* the MBR aka Master Boot Record.
>
>> 2) This code scans the partitiontable (part of the 512 Byte) for an active
>> partition, then reads *this* sector and executes it. the MBR.
> This is often called the the PBR or Partition Boot Record.
>
>> 3) This sector - which is probably different for FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, EXTFS filesystems
>>   and OS. E.g. FreeDOS searches for "KERNEL.SYS", MSDOS searches for IO.SYS, loads it
>>   and executes it.
>
>> 4) KERNEL.SYS is then responsible to locate FDCONFIG.SYS and FDAUTO.BAT, COMMAND.COM.
>
>>
> Tom
>
>
>
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