[vox-tech] bootable partition question

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Peter Jay Salzman (p@dirac.org):

> 
> my understanding is that a bootable partition is used when the MBR
> doesn't contain a boot strap program -- BIOS loads in a bootstrapper
> from the beginning of a bootable partition.

I referred in another reply on this thread to the "unnamed Microsoft MBR
program", which is what gets written to the first 446 bytes of sector
zero when you boot an MS-DOS diskette and then type "FDISK /MBR".  Or 
some equivalent action.  To my knowledge, that program is the only one
that pays any attention whatsoever to the active ("bootable") flag, if 
such is set on primary partitions.

-- 
Cheers,                                      "Reality is not optional."
Rick Moen                                             -- Thomas Sowell
rick@linuxmafia.com