BK>>  Cause it's too damn primitive. Which is also why I want to do  it.

 ML> ROTFL!! believe it or not, i have an original IBM PC
 ML> here... two floppies, no hard drive... no way to put a
 ML> harddrive in it, either... the ROMs (yes, there are more
 ML> than one chip for the BIOS) have code to boot to BASIC if
 ML> there is no floppy and IBM wants way way way too much for
 ML> HD capable BIOS for that box... anyway, i have a series of
 ML> boot floppies that i use in it to load network stuffs for
 ML> the old 8bit network card and i cruise the internet with it
 ML> from time to time... since it is tied into my home network,
 ML> i don't have to futz about with dialers and such... i just
 ML> change the floppy and load the text only browser and away
 ML> we go O:)

 ML> of course, telnet and ftp are used quite a bit on that box,
 ML> too ;)

 BK>  Ok, now that's primitive.

hahaha... eeeyup! that's about as primitive as you can go unless i can get
my timex sinclair or an old TI99 tied in and online O:) i don't have my
Model 1 Level 1 TRS80 any more ;(

 BK>  OTOH, did you ever try something like a Zip drive? Or an
 BK>  external drive?

no, what i need to do is to prep the HD on the same card in another
machine... i was able to go so far as to fdisk and create the partition but
then can't get it to go around the ROM BASIC so i can boot it off a floppy
and format the drive... i basically stopped there... at some point, i
called IBM and inquired about new ROM chips for that box that would enable
it to have a hard drive... the woman told me that the chips would be over
$300US (!!) and i simply told her thanks but no thanks ;)  i think those
chips would be the same ones as in an IBM PCXT since those had hard
drives... this unit is a plain old PC...

)\/(ark