On Wednesday, 23 December 2020 18:56:37 GMT Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 11:25 AM Peter Humphrey <peter@prh.myzen.co.uk>
> 
> wrote:
> > On Wednesday, 23 December 2020 09:54:36 GMT Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> > > On 22/12/2020 14:58, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > > > Greetings,
> > > > 
> > > > Just a quickie - is there a way to enable a machine built on an MSDOS
> 
> BIOS
> 
> > > A *what* BIOS? Do mean you run MS-DOS as on OS?
> > 
> > What would you call it?
> > 
> > $ file /boot/boot.0800: DOS/MBR boot sector.
> > 
> > --
> > Regards,
> > Peter.
> 
> Are you possibly conflating BIOS which is computer code in ROM on the
> motherboard and what the CPU runs on power up with the MBR which resides on
> the hard drive you are booting from?
> 
> - Mark

The file boot.0800 appears to be a backup of the MBR bootloader code and I bet 
it is 512B in size.  It reflects dev with major number 08 and minor number 00, 
e.g. /dev/hda1, or /dev/sda1.   I would also bet this was created by LILO, 
which is polite enough to back up the existing MBR before dumping its own code 
in the first sector of a hard disk.  Characteristically, MSWindows is not that 
accommodating for other persons' bootloader codes.