Using LOADLIN with FreeLDR didn't work to load ReactOS from DOS, so I remembered the GRUB4DOS program.
Please download but don't distribute in any way the following file (this is just a demo, I don't feel like listing sites for sourcefiles)
http://odin.fdos.org/odin2005/freeldr.img
bootsequence: 1) bootfloppy 2) FreeDOS bootsector (see kernel ; GPL ) 3) FreeDOS kernel (kernel 2035A, www.freedos.org ; GPL ) 4) FreeDOS command.com (FreeCOM, see www.fdos.org/kernel ; GPL ) 5) Batchfile (autoexec.bat, see below ; just a script, public domain thus) 6) GRUB (compresses nicely with UPX ; GPL) 7) FreeLDR (compresses nice with zip, but not bootable then. Can't be compressed by UPX unfortunately)
Same configuration can be done on harddisk, I think (fat32 also???), which means you can now boot FreeLDR from harddisk even without a FreeLDR realmode install program or associated bootsector.
configuration might be even more lightweight if I omitted FreeCOM (command.com) and used "SHELL=A:\GRUB.EXE --config-file="kernel (fd0)/freeldr.sys" instead.
Some small misc. bugs on ReactOS: FreeLDR: Title part has issues when it's too long, overwrites Brian Palmer's name, and at right side it's cut-off CMD: why does "EXIT /?" (give helpscreen for EXIT command) close the cmd-window?
@echo off cdd a:\ echo. echo Welcome to FreeDOS (http://www.freedos.org) echo Booting FreeLDR 2.0.0 through GRUB4DOS. Press CTRL-C to abort or pause grub --config-file="kernel (fd0)/freeldr.sys