[conspire] For the record

[Rick Moen]

So, the IBM PC ROM BIOS has always been amenable to booting from pretty
much anything that can grab the 13h hardware interrupt and run with it,
right?  Suppose you were determined to make your PC boot from somethin
Bad and Wrong?

Step 1.  Make a tiny version of the FreeDOS kernel and COMMAND.COM, etc.
Includes a patched version of INTERLNK.COM able to load disk images from
a serial interface like a cassette tape or a parallel port, and
transfers control to the disk image.

Are we going to boot from a cassette tape or a Centronics device, then?
Oh, no, padawan.  Stay attentive.

Step 2.  Now, you take BootLPT/86 source code for booting vintage
Pee-Cees over "Laplink" parallel-port cables
(http://boginjr.com/it/sw/dev/bootlpt-86/), stir in gently some 5150CAXX
(http://boginjr.com/it/sw/dev/5150caxx/) source code for cassette port
support, compile for i386, and put the resulting first-stage bootloader
code into an itty-bitty 8kB EPROM.  Plug the EEPROM into your Pee-Cee's
BioS expansion socket.

Step 3.  Download the 64kB FreeDOS disk images from the BootLPT/86
project, and have it custom-pressed as 'music' onto a vinyl LP record.

Step 4.  Connect your phonograph to a preamplifier.  Line-level output
goes from there to the built-in "cassette interface" on the Pee-Cee.

Step 5.  Turn on the Pee-Cee.  The BIOS hunts for something to grab Int
13h, finds the option ROM.  The BIOS extension code on the option ROM
starts listening on the built-in cassette port.  Start playing the
record from its lead-in groove (please, with a clean surface, so no
pops).  Ready, set, boot!

http://boginjr.com/it/sw/dev/vinyl-boot/