I imaged Windows 95 and 98 PCs using "udpcast" from bootable Linux floppies back in the late 90s. I can't remember the kernel version now, but I remember that it was really nice when "make bzImage" was introduced. The kernel be stored bzip2-compressed. As I recall I got a few more KB file files in my root filesystem after that feature was introduced.
It's amazing how much comes back just researching for this comment-- fond memories of manipulating "root flags" with "rdev", for example. Knowing exactly what was going on, from BIOS handing off the boot sector thru the kernel starting up and mounting the root filesytem was a real treat.
Dealing with the unreliability of floppy disks and floppy drives, however, I will never feel nostalgia for.
How well did bzip2 run on Win9x Era computers? In my experience, that while the compression ratio was significantly better than gzip, both compression and decompression were significantly more CPU intense.
It was much slower that gzip. Decompression isn't so bad, but compression is very slow (epecially with "-9"). The compression ratio was better and every sector I could get back helped. My application was for unattended operation and I rarely needed to recompile the kernel so the time penalty wasn't something I noticed.
It's amazing how much comes back just researching for this comment-- fond memories of manipulating "root flags" with "rdev", for example. Knowing exactly what was going on, from BIOS handing off the boot sector thru the kernel starting up and mounting the root filesytem was a real treat.
Dealing with the unreliability of floppy disks and floppy drives, however, I will never feel nostalgia for.