a variety of network hardware and
protocols.<P>

It is hoped that boot loaders will be created that support multiple loading
mechanisms, increasing their portability, robustness, and
user-friendliness.<P>

<H3>Boot-time configuration</H3>

It is often necessary for one reason or another for the user to be able to
provide some configuration information to the OS dynamically at boot time.
While this standard should not dictate how this configuration information
is obtained by the boot loader, it should provid