>this BIOS emulation magic only happens once you're in DOS booted from a USB medium. It doesn't apply if DOS is installed on a real hard disk.

This is not exactly correct, in fact just the opposite is how it actually is on a regular BIOS PC and MBR-layout SSD.

The problem is, most people don't have regular BIOS PC's nor MBR-layout SSD's any more like they did before 2012.

But these features can still be enabled on all but the crummiest of UEFI motherboards.

Then you just have to start from scratch with your motherboard settings in CSM/BIOS mode, with a blank SSD partitioned in MBR-layout, having its first volume be set as your "Active" bootable Primary partition.

Fortunately what the author has encountered is the way a proper UEFI firmware is supposed to seek and load boot files from the first suitable FAT32 volume on your designated Boot Drive (your choice USB, SATA, CDROM, etc) whether or not it is on a GPT or MBR layout, USB HDD or SSD.

I recently discovered Tinker WriterDeck OS (https://tinker.sh/), which I’d been meaning to try, but this sounds like an even easier solution for repurposing old laptops and writing without distraction.

I was looking for something just like this, thanks!

I'd put pdmenu on that with an automatic login. The user would jut have an editor, email assistant for mutt, net settings, lynx with gopher bookmars, mocp for music/podcasts, and maybe GPM for the mouse.

Nice! I have been toying with KolibriOS and MenuetOS for my anti-social platform. You can network on both, and sometimes requires a direct hardwired Ethernet cable. Originally I was interested in them given they are written in assembly using FASM. I was a 1977 CBM (Commodore PET 2001), so I am more of a lime-green on black screen vs. the DOS grey/blue. Cool!

I'm working towards something similar with an Emacs configuration. That way, it's a workflow I could use on a daily driver as well.

I was initially skeptical of the learning curve, but the power of Emacs is well worth it.

WordPerfect 6.0a for DOS and MS-DOS 6.22 is what we used back in the day™.

Also, this:

http://mynor.org/my4th_forthdeck.htm

And for retro users,

there's a TRS-100 which can run a moddem ROM and Forth.

https://www.strangegizmo.com/products/mforth/

It it has an editor you could reuse that as a much smarter version of AlphaSmart.