i'd do a bootable cd with a diskette used only if you can't
get your system to boot the CD directly.  i suspect the boot
diskette will then fit 1.44mb.  the main reason the vita cd isn't bootable
now is that i got it to boot but then discovered i'd need to mend
something to complete the process and there wasn't enough time (at the
time).  recently i've done some more to get a floppy-less thinkpad
going, and the next cd should be bootable.  this simplifies the
process because you've got access to the full version of all commands
on the full system (on the cd) rather than trying to cram things in
to a compressed file system on floppy.