this is a terrible hack, but if you leave the bios areas alone, you can make a system call like machine that downshifts back into real mode, makes the call, and

this is a terrible hack, but if you leave the bios areas alone, you can make a system call like machine that downshifts back into real mode, makes the call, and shifts back up into protected mode (or all the way back up into 64 bit mode) its not _really_ worth it, but if you're just noodling around and want to send packets or write to disks you don't have to write drivers. of course you have to have dedicated buffers visible in both spaces. the only other reason i can think of to use real mode is to actually explore the segment model rather than just treating it as trash you have to walk over to get something up from reset...but it would probably be better just to invent some kind of segmented virtual machine