Nicholas Coad wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:
 MB> You can use non-standard IRQs and even share IRQs across ports 
 MB> (if your hardware allows this) quite easily, using the 
 MB> "setserial" utility.
 NC> Woa!  I never knew that an IRQ could be shared.  This would
 NC> be quite useful. What sort of hardware supports this?
ISA does not allow sharing an IRQ across different cards for electrical 
reasons.  However, a number of ports can share a single IRQ on the same ISA 
card if this is properly provided for.  The STB 4-COM and Boca Research 
IOAT66 are both examples of multiport serial cards which use standard 
16550-style UARTs and which allow sharing all of their ports on one IRQ.
 MB> interest is in building a network server, Red Hat or Caldera is
 MB> probably the best choice.
 NC> Ca either of these be installed over DOS 6.22.  I as because
 NC> it's be much easier to setup MS DOS lan client than playing
 NC> with millions of disks, or transfering a CD-ROM drive.
Linux is an operating system.  You boot it.  It can be booted using the 
LOADLIN utility, which uses DOS as a loader.  However, when LOADLIN 
completes, DOS is no longer running and Linux is.
On the other hand, Linux has built-in networking.  If you have the proper 
Ethernet card and configuration, you could install from a CD-ROM drive on 
another machine or an Internet connection.  The Debian package does allow 
making a 6- or 7-floppy boot set and getting Linux installed that way.  After 
that, however, you would need to be able to access a Debian package 
repository to do anything useful, and that could be on a network-accessible 
machine or over the public Internet.
 
-- Mike
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