> with a custom data packing method that is optimized for streaming directly from CD to the hard disk without any seeking

This is nice. I've always wondered why they don't do this with the core parts of the os and then only extract additional components and drivers. But maybe back then the core was only a few MB and it wouldn't have helped so much...

I remember the setup taking ages. With 9x I don't think any install ever lasted longer than a year, so I did this a lot. :)