Some further questions about booting

[Jan Willem Stumpel <jstumpel@planet.nl>]

Sorry to ask one more question about this... I want to have some
good understanding of these things in order to modernise my
"Dosemu for dummies" page.

With a default .deb or .rpm install of 1.4, I can make the C:
drive equal to the existing C: drive of a previous installation of
dosemu. Say my previous version's C: drive is $HOME/olddos. Then I
can do either

1) create a $HOME/.dosemurc file with a line in it
   $_hdimage = "$HOME/olddos"

2) go to $HOME/.dosemu/drives and do
   ln -nsf $HOME/olddos c

3) go to $HOME/.dosemu and do
   mv drive_c drive_c.orig
   ln -nsf $HOME/olddos drive_c

(BTW which of these 3 methods would be the best?)

This works OK. This I understand, because the "olddos" from my
existing installation is a "pseudo-C:" drive with the proper "boot
files" in it (msdos.sys, io.sys, command.com, or in the case of
freedos: kernel.sys and command.com).

But what I do not understand is how the original C: drive (just
after a fresh install), namely $HOME/.dosemu/drive_c, could work.
It does not contain the .sys files that a DOS boot disk should
have. Just AUTOEXEC and CONFIG. So how can it boot?

Regards, Jan