Self-booting disk
A self-booting disk is a floppy disk for home computers or personal computers that loads—or boots—directly into a standalone application when the system is turned on, bypassing the operating system. This was common, even standard, on some computers in the late 1970s to early 1990s. Video games were the type of application most commonly distributed using this technique.
The term "PC booter" is sometimes used in reference to self-booting software for
Purpose
On some home computers like the Apple II, software is loaded by inserting a floppy disk and turning on or resetting the machine. It's analogous to cartridges on game consoles such as the Atari 2600 and Nintendo Entertainment System. It does not require using a command-line interface or other method to launch software.
It was common for self-booting disks to use non-standard disk formatting, so the contents could not be viewed or copied via a system's normal disk operating system. They could still be copied by other utilities.
Most self-booting programs are written to not need features of an existing operating system, such as MS-DOS, and access the hardware directly or use low-level functions that are built into read-only memory. Other programs provide a specialized replacement for the operating system.[1]
Drawbacks
Self-booting disks require the system to turned on or rebooted to use the software. The user cannot switch between programs. The software can only exist on its own floppy disk, not stored on a disk with multiple programs, such as a hard disk drive.
The self-booting game or application cannot easily use computer hardware normally accessed through device drivers in the operating system. The program needs built-in support for each specific peripheral, and it doesn't automatically get the benefit of improvements or bug fixes or support for updated versions.
Examples
Between 1983 and 1984,
A scaled down version of
In 1998,
See also
- Boot diskette
- List of self-booting IBM PC compatible games
- Live CD
- Live USB
- Portable application
- Self-extracting archive
- Executable compression
References
- ^ a b Maher, Jimmy (2013-03-20). "The Top of its Game". The Digital Antiquarian. Archived from the original on 2020-02-11. Retrieved 2014-07-10.
- Concurrent CP/MOperating System. […]
- Concurrent CP/M. […]
- ISSN 0745-2500. Archived from the originalon 2020-02-11. Retrieved 2020-02-11.
- ^ Caldera, Inc. 1998. Archived from the originalon 1999-05-08.
- ^ Caldera Thin Clients, Inc. 1998-05-10 [1998-02-17]. Archived from the original on 2020-02-08. Retrieved 2020-02-08. [4][5][6][7] (NB. Self-extracting archiveDRWEBDEM.EXE (1387560 bytes) contains DRWEBDEM.IMG, a bootable 1.44 MB floppy disk image file.)
Further reading
- Pinkston, Donnie, ed. (2018-11-27). "Chapter 3. Project 2: PC Booter". Pintos Projects. Caltech. Archivedfrom the original on 2020-02-11. Retrieved 2020-02-11.