loadlin was the tool that would boot the kernel (including initrd) from a running DOS system. You might be thinking of umsdos? IIRC, that's the tool that would

loadlin was the tool that would boot the kernel (including initrd) from a running DOS system. You might be thinking of umsdos? IIRC, that's the tool that would allow you to actually run Linux from a FAT partition (likely FAT16).