I disagree here, a bit. And some don't. So, for a while the 53C810 was a cheap and good FAST SCSI to use, since one could be used that had no boot PROM on it.
Dumb cards are out of use now.
Z and the all-important boot program. Not risky or complicated. Your decision to do it this way is the proper cautious approach. I have seen LILO get weird too many times for my taste. You will have to boot from the floppy, run fdisk, and fix this.