LinuxBIOS + ADLO + BOCHS BIOS + ( LILO | GRUB )
Seems like a lot of complexity, and I am kind of a zealot against real mode. Has anyone considered writing the disk/video interface for Grub, to replace the BIOS calls? Looking at the Grub code the BIOS calls seem pretty isolated, and most of the code (I think) is already in linuxbios in some form or another (although vga is there for only a couple of boards right now). I for one would like a general bootloader, and Grub is pretty neat.
Yes. I agree it is complex. We have given it fairly a bit of though and if you want to support legacy applications then it is pretty much about the only way to do this.
Sure we could go LinuxBIOS version of grub, but unless you add "legacy application support" it won't help you with booting anything else other than linux. So while it may fit with your particular problem, usefullness of such hack won't be as big as one could expect.