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In article <36860001@hpopd.pwd.hp.com> richardh@hpopd.pwd.hp.com (Richard Hancock) writes:
}Both io.sys and msdos.sys (or their equivalents) must occupy contiguous
}clusters and must occupy the first available clusters.

The former limitation was removed in MSDOS 3.3 and the latter in MSDOS 5.0.
For DOS 5.0, the restrictions are:
	IO.SYS/IBMBIO.COM and MSDOS.SYS/IBMDOS.COM must be the first two
		files in the root directory
	The first three sectors of IO.SYS/IBMBIO.COM must be contiguous
For DOS 3.3-4.02, additionally
	The first three sectors of IO.SYS must be the first three data
		sectors on the disk.

Those first three sectors contain a smarter bootstrap loader which knows
how to follow the FAT chain; since most disks use 2K or larger clusters,
the first three sectors which must be contiguous are typically located in
a single cluster (which is by definition contiguous).

However, you can't *move* IO.SYS because its starting location is hardwired
into the boot sector (you can only do so much in 448 bytes...).



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