Booting a Linux distribution on a "raw partition"

Hello!
The computer I have Bochs on currently has a Zip-100 drive installed.

On a Zip-100 disk I've copied the contents of the DLX-Linux image to it.

Now the problem, I've created a GRUB boot disk and setup a menu to
enable me to boot the kernel for DLX-Linux. And in this case when I've
enabled the regular one to boot from a inserted physical floppy, the
one with GRUB on it, it then booted the distribution on the supplied
disk image.

However after I followed the prescribed instructions for mounting this
image and then using typical Linux methods to copy its contents to the
formatted Zip disk, I would then try to boot it using the same
methods. Each time I ended up with a variety of error messages from
GRUB. Including one that insisted that the partition table was
invalid, or corrupt. This was when the Zip disk was set to present
number four as the one, moving it to 1 caused a different error.

Has booting from a raw partition on Linux ever been resolved?

To explain: About the time I started getting more interested in Linux,
I found out about the Mach kernel and its features. About the same
time that the kernel version DLX-Linux uses was active, a group of
enthusiasts overseas managed to combine a Mach creation and the
kernel. Before assembling a machine to study it closer, if that's at
all possible, I wanted to make use of Bochs to start off the study.
But the fixed size image that is provided makes that no longer
possible. Currently there's a collection of items at the Ibiblio.org
site in their directory concerning older releases of Linux that
survived a horrendous attack on the site some years ago.
-----
Gregg C Levine [email protected]
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."

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