Can HDD emulation be used to allow me to use my own bootable file system on a CD?

Question

I'm playing around with OS development, and I want to use my own custom file system. The thing is, to get my OS onto the HDD I'm going to create an installation program on a CD, which I ideally want to create using the same file system; this will mean I don't have to worry about navigating the CDFS, and I'll be able to use the same bootloader system I have for my OS to develop the installation program (this will be a single flat binary file where the first 512 bytes contains code to load the remainder of the file into memory and execute the code contained within). So the question is, can this be achieved with HDD emulation, and if so how do I go about burning my flat file system image onto the CD to accomplish this?

Thanks in advance, Lee.

Answer 1

Seems you should start with investigating El Torito specification. The so-called "emulation mode" shall provide up to 2.88MB image (extended diskette) which is enough for playing with OS development.

Answer 2

FYI: A bootsector of a cd isn't only 512 bytes in size like floppies or harddrive bootsectors. A bootsector of a cd is 4096 bytes in size. Maybe it requires another signature at the end than a normal harddrive bootsector (I don't know)