Running os from floppy harmfull?

[ahelg]

I've been looking at os development lately, mainly out of interest for how an os works. Now I was wondering. If I build code, put it on a diskette and run it from there, can that cause any damage to my current OS seeing as it is not (or shouldn't be) loading anything from the hard drive.

[Kemp]

Unless you write anything to the hard drive it won't affect anything.

[Kevin McGuire]

--- The right way to do it. ---
This is _almost_ a common sense question, since you are booting a operating system, kernel, or operating system independant image if you prefer which has the same potential capabilities as the operating system you currently have installed, and therefore if it can foobar your computer than so can one booted from a floppy disk.

If you have some really good stuff and you do not like risks it could be more of a better idea to download a IA32 emulator from the internet and instead use this to boot a operating system for testing or curiosity. Why take a risk when you can do it the right way. Also, if you do get into operating system development you will enjoy the fact that your new emulator setup will save lots of time.

http://www.mega-tokyo.com/osfaq/PcEmulators

--- The very low risk gamble ---
Boot it like kemp said.

[ahelg]

If I'm using Qemu, can I boot from a bootable floppy disk or does it have to be a img file?

[gaf]

You can tell qemu to boot from a floppy by setting the file path to point to the device (linux: -fda /dev/fd0, windows: -fda a: ?). It's nevertheless a good idea to use an image as it doesn't only boot much faster, but also protects you from broken floppy sectors. In case that you're using linux you can write your kernel directly to the image once you've mounted it. For windows there's a small utility called vfd that allows you to use your image just like a regular floppy.

regards,
gaf