Seems very odd to me - I need to load drivers for the very device that I just booted from ? Think about it...the BIOS supports booting from CD, so, why, after booting from CD, do I need to load a driver so I can then see/use that same drive ?
And why, if I can boot from a floppy, take it out, put another in, and run a program, why can't a person do the same with a cd ? Not rocket science I wouldn't think.
All this makes me wonder, how does one make a bootable ISO, as, if I can add my 3com file >before< a certain step, why can't I make a bootcd with the 3com file in it, internally, so I can run it after booting ?
The problem I have with listing device=cdrom or whatever, is I want this boot cd to work on ANY PC, with ANY cdrom, because ANY PC can boot from a cd, just like any PC can boot from a floppy. Seems pretty simple to me.
Maybe this is why some folks say booting from a memory stick is easier.