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Comment by anonymousiam | Hacker News Reader

CP/M‑386 is currently in the very early development stages.

    Full 32‑bit protected mode implementation with Ring‑3 TPA.
    Bootable via 3.5" 1.44MB floppy disk MBR or GRUB Multiboot kernel.
    Supports VGA text (0xB8000) and/or COM1 serial (9600/N/8/1, 0x3F8) consoles.
    No floppy/hard disk/CD/USB/network/sound/other drivers (yet).

So it boots from a floppy, but has no floppy disk support?

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That's not surprising. The page says the kernel is multiboot compliant, which means it can be loaded by existing boot loaders. Whether the kernel later provides a floppy driver is a separate story.

This is also pretty common even if you don't use multiboot. The I/O services exposed by the BIOS or firmware during boot may not be usable once the kernel has started, and thus the kernel has to provide its own drivers.

Yes, currently the system boots from a floppy disk (stage1 -> stage2 loader), which then loads the OS (CBIOS/BDOS/CCP) and an (384K) initial ramdisk, and currently runs out of memory, so once the OS is booted the disk can actually be removed from the system.

Once there is more proper disk support, the initial ramdisk can become optional, though a more proper ramdisk implementation is planned, which will make supporting floppy-disk-only systems easier.

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