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Unless he images that software to durable media like archival DVDs it can be lost as the floppies deteriorate. Lose one of a set and you're screwed.

Back in the proverbial day we used Winimage which is (amazingly) still available. https://www.winimage.com/

Of course Linux users have other options like dd.

If you collect old software do yourself a favor and image it immediately so you'll have more than the packaging and a useless floppy in the future.

And Gilles Vollant's WinImage crosses the finish line 10 years before Microsoft.

Indeed, I use http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm to setup booting linux from windows.

Only real advantage of this is if messing with your windows MBR gives you the willies - since lilo/grub offer more facilities & you have go via those anyhow.

Off topic here but I have found option C to be the best when working dual boot Linux/Windows. You then configure the standard Windows boot loader to recognize and provide an option for booting from the Linux partition as well. Generally, it is much easier to recover a lost Linux partition then it is to recover Windows when a dual boot goes wrong so staying as much Windows native as possible seems like the most stable approach.
Bootpart can make option C very easy.

Besides, it should come as no great shock that Microsoft do not tolerate dual booting systems anyway - look at how easily Windows wipes over the boot block when you reinstall it on a PC where you're booting Linux also.

That is a disadvantage. I now use the plain old Windows boot loader for multibooting for that reason. The process is extremely simple if you use bootpart.
It provides a easy method of extracting the boot block from other partition/drives. It will also adds the required configuation changes to the c:\boot.ini file. Dual boot in a few simple steps.
If your second or third planned OS also blindly over writes the boot drive MBR as well like Windows does, it way be a little tricky. I've only dual booted with various Linux distributions and everyone of them I've used allows you to specify where you want the boot block.

On a side note, my last dual boot Windows/Linux install was Xandros. With Xandoros, when you uncheck the box to include the bootloader in the MBR, it states that you must make a boot floppy when prompted later in the install or you will not be able to boot into Xandros. I was never prompted or given a chance to make that floppy throughout the install and was only given a "Press Enter to restart computer" when the install was done. Xandros does default to also placing the boot block in the root of the installation partition so I was able to use bootpart and get it going with no problems.

While it is true that Windows 98/ME users do not use a boot loader, all Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 users also have one. Further, even when using Linux as part of a multiboot setup, the Windows boot loader is sometimes the best to go for. That is especially true when there are multiple Windows systems. In a machine with both 64-bit and regular Windows versions alongside various Linux distributions, the cleanest approach is the Windows boot loader in conjunction with bootpart.

An easier way is to use BootPart to automate the whole process. It will even add an entry in boot.ini.

From the site:
BOOTPART creates a 512 byte file which contains an image of the boot sector that loads the boot sector of the partition. After, this file is declared in C:\BOOT.INI (a text file used by the Windows NT boot menu).

Or just the use the very easy util bootpart (http://winimage.com/bootpart.htm). It is free and will do all the work for you.

-apnar

Microsoft developed tools to get 1.6 and 1.8MB out of a 1.44MB floppy.

DMF.

I know I'm jumping into the fray a wee late on this but I noticed that no one has mentioned this tool yet (or I missed it). I have a folder on my USB flashdrive full of floppy images for everything from boot disks to utilities to BIOS updates. Very handy. I only have to carry one or two floppies in the event of an incident. I also carry this on CD for those pesky non-USB-loving machines out there...

Check out the details here...

There may be some way to manipulate FAT disk images under windows, though I've never come across such a tool, though I've never had a need to be honest

Try WinImage.

-Miki

With BootPart, the NT boot loader can load pretty much anything.