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I'm writing this mainly as a reminder to myself about how this process is 
accomplished. It's not that complex but things stay in memory for shorter 
and shorter periods as we age :). The process uses qemu and its associated 
programs as well as some native Linux/Unix ones. As will become clear, 
these directions presume one is using a Linux computer.

1) Create the disk image to which BL will be installed

-------------------------------
qemu-img create BLdisk.img 100M
-------------------------------

creates a 100 MB virtual hard disk.

2) Download and unpack the BL floppy disks. BL's Floppy 1 (DISK1.IMG) is a 
disk image and can be used as-is to boot along with BLdisk.img using qemu. 
To use BL's floppy 2, which is not an image file but just a compressed 
file (tgz), requires getting the tgz file into an image file. To do this, 
either a) copy the file (DISK2.TGZ) to a floppy disk and then make an 
image of that disk using Linux's dd utility (dd if=/dev/fd0 of=disk2.img), 
or b) create a floppy-sized disk image on the hard drive using either dd 
or qemu-img, mount it as a loop device, copy over BL's DISK2.TGZ to it, 
and umount it. In any case, the end result should be two image files on 
your hard drive named (something like) DISK1.IMG and DISK2.IMG. I will 
just mention here that a real floppy drive can be used for this instead of 
image files located on the hard drive. Since this how to will focus on the 
image-files-on-the-HD method it will not attempt to cover that somewhat 
simpler method.

3) Once you've completed step 2, you boot using qemu. The BLdisk.img file 
specified to qemu as the hard drive and the first floppy image is 
specified as the floppy drive. That involves issuing a command like the 
following

----------------------------------------------------------
qemu -b a -fda /path/to/DISK1.IMG -hda /path/to/BLdisk.img
----------------------------------------------------------

(-b a tells qemu to boot from the virtual floppy drive instead of the 
virtual hard drive)

4) once qemu has loaded all of DISK1.IMG, the newly (partially) booted BL 
is going to ask you to insert the second diskette. You do this using 
what's called the qemu "monitor." Getting to the monitor involves a 
process very similar to switching virtual terminals on a regular Linux 
system. When DISK1.IMG is fully loaded and prompts for the second 
diskette, hit ctrl-alt-2 (the number 2, not F2). That takes you to a qemu 
monitor screen where you'll see a qemu command prompt. At the qemu prompt 
enter

----------
eject fda
----------

to eject the virtual floppy. Then enter

-----------------------------
change fda /path/to/DISK2.IMG
-----------------------------

(it's probably best and easiest to have all relevant file images in the 
same directory and to issue qemu commands from that directory).

Then switch back from the qemu monitor to the main qemu screen by hitting 
ctrl-alt-1 (that's a 1, not an F1) and hit the enter key. BL should 
continue booting using the second disk image you pointed it to and 
eventually take you to the BL welcome screen.

5) From this point you simply follow BL's install-to-hd directions: use 
fdisk to create a partition on /dev/hda, format the partition ext2, then 
mount it at /hd and run the install-to-hd script. When it asks you to 
insert floppy 1, adapt the steps outlined in step 4 to switch the floppy 
images again.

When you're done with that you should have a BL install on your 100 MB 
qemu disk image. Just like with a regular hard drive install of BL, you 
have to boot the hard drive using the floppy on a fresh installation and 
then install lilo using BL's supplied directions.

I would just point out in closing that I had to issue

-------------------
lilo -b /dev/hda -v
-------------------

several times before lilo was successfully and fully written to the mbr of 
the qemu virtual hard disk.

Look for revisions to this how to in case important details were 
inadvertently left out.

James