The ROMDSK tool kit allows many DOS kernels to boot off ROM (EPROM, Flash),
as long as the kernel is able to boot off drive B: (alas, M$-D0$ can't!!!).

It's written by Stanislav Bonchev in 1996 as his graduate work, under the
direction of Luchezar Georgiev, Technical University of Varna, Bulgaria,
Computer Science Department. It's tested with R0M-D0$/Data1ite and FreeDOS
(the main living dyDOSaurs today). Please note that the building of the ROM
disk is not possible in Windows but must be done in plain DOS (7+) only.
(Update 2003: It can now also be done in the latest FreeDOS kernels!)

The most suitable DOS for embedded applications is, without doubt, R0M-D0$
by Data1ite. But it's not free, and the cost of its $DK rose from $500 to
$1250 in 2001! The labels for the production copies ain't cheap either. So
many x86-compatible embedded systems developers nowadays decide to opt for
FreeDOS. It's already a fairly mature and stable product, especially the
kernel. So here is a little toolkit which can make it boot off ROM.

The usual solution is: (1) make a binary copy of the ROM disk, (2) load the
kernel as a BIOS extension, and (3) have the kernel ROM-disk driver load
the rest of the software off the ROM disk. The kernel data is always copied
to RAM, but the code may reside in ROM. If so, it can't be self-modifying.
Besides, standard DOS kernel images lacking a ROM-disk driver can't boot...

ROMDSK works in a different way. It's lazier: it (1) lets DOS do the dirty
work of creating the ROM disk image itself, and (2) lets BIOS do the dirty
work of loading the DOS kernel itself! So any ordinary DOS kernel can boot
this way, as long as it's not M$-D0$!!! Please see the MAKEROM.BAT file for
more details on the working principles. Unfortunately for most readers, all
the sources are commented in Bulgarian only, so understanding the internals
of the code is not easy. Hopefully, some day a translation to English will
be done, but until then, you're on your own. Sorry!

Most source files compile only with the venerable old TASMB.COM (included).

Please note that ROMDSK creates only a binary image of the BIOS extension
containing DOS kernel and any other software to load. It's up to the user
to put it into a ROM (shared with BIOS or not).

Many thanks to Chairman of our Computer Science Department Assoc.Prof Peter
Antonov who allowed us to release this code under the GNU Public License.

For any complaints, suggestions and so on, please contact Stanislav Bonchev
at sbk@gifta.bg or Luchezar Georgiev at <variable>.

Enjoy!
