Excerpts from netbsd: 23-Apr-97 Re: boot NetBSD from DOS Charles M.
Hannum@gnu.ai (560)

> >   Okay, there are boot blocks to boot a NetBSD kernel from a DOS
> > partition now.
> >   Has someone built a DOS program to load a NetBSD kernel from a DOS
> > partition? Or, just to load "/boot" from DOS?
> 
> The new i386/stand/dosboot is supposed to do that, but I'm not sure
> how well it's been tested.

To be exact, booting with a DOS program is currently the only way
to boot a kernel on a DOS partition. There is no standalone code to
interpret a DOS filesystem.
dosboot works well in my environment, and I don't know about bug
reports.
A known limitation is that the program doesn't cooperate with DOS
extenders/memory managers.
btw, can anybody tell me if there is still a 64k DMA boundary for floppy
reads in newer PC chipsets? There is a theoretical possibility for
buffer overflows if yes (and if DOS loads the program on an odd
address).
There is some 16/32bit confusion in the real mode part of the DOS
support code (sometimes hard to understand what gas makes
of the assembler code). I sent in patches some weeks ago...
Ask me for them if you see errors which look like bad return values
from DOS calls.

best regards
Matthias Drochner