Optromloader: 8086 floppy-loading of option ROMs
github.comAuthor here. Optromloader made front page somehow.
I will read your comments, and try to answer questions if any.
This is a ridiculous project, and I love it.
I grew up on old x86 machines, and making ancient machines do "modern" things is always cool.
Kids today don't believe me when I say I ran my ppp dialer from DOS, and had a working IP stack, and used Kali to emulate IPX across the Internet in the late 90s (great for Descent II, or Doom, or etc)
This is also around the same time period that Joe Rogan claims to have owned a T1 to get lower ping in Quake 1/Quakeworld, and I was a heavy Quake player, so its entirely possible I fought Joe and won (the community back then wasn't very big, yet I still put in north of 5k hours into Q1/QW), all from DOS.
People don't understand the power of what you can do with DOS, because DOS isn't an OS, and the amount of TSR shenanigans that can be done is unlimited, plus all the stuff that DOS extenders (DOS4G, etc) could do.
> Kids today don't believe me when I say I ran my ppp dialer from DOS, and had a working IP stack
KA9Q was what I used back in the day with Demon Internet.
> TSR shenanigans
One of the first things I learned to write with Zorland C and a bit of assembler on DOS 3.2 were TSR's. They were a lot of fun.
Ahem! Borland or Zortech? ;->
Genuinely "Zorland" with a Z which preceded Zortech. It was one of Walter Bright's early compilers. We're talking 1985'ish here :)
He! Time flies. I wonder if he named it intentionally like that.