From: Ed Beroset 
Subject: Re: Code in Boot Sector
At 14:19 12/18/97, you wrote:
>
>However, there are BIOS areas that an operating doesn't mess with,
>and that's because it is very specific to the hardware, ie.
>a particular motherboard chip set, or video chep set, or a non-IDE
>interface like SCSI.
Once the motherboard chipset is initialized, there's not typically a whole
lot that the operating system requires of it.  In the special cases in
which something is required (e.g. power management, changing video modes,
SCSI I/O), a modern operating system (e.g. Linux, NT, OS/2) typically
either uses its own drivers or does without the service.  The very simple
reason is that the BIOS services are typically (but not exclusively)
written for real mode for backwards compatibility reasons and there are not
really well established standards for general purpose 32-bit protected mode
BIOS services (some exceptions include APM and PCI APIs).  
>SM>The boot virus protection interferes with certain programs, such
>SM>as Win95. 
That tends to support the idea that Win95 is actually the world's largest
computer virus, doesn't it? :-)
Ed
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