You may wish to make a boot floppy even if you intend to boot the system from the hard disk. The reason for this is that it's possible for the hard disk bootstrap to be mis-installed, but a boot floppy will almost always work.

Feed the system a blank floppy as directed. Make sure the floppy isn't write-protected, as the software will format and write it. Mark this the 「Custom Boot」 floppy and write-protect it once it has been written.

This floppy will contain a kernel and a simple file system, with a directive to use your new root file system.