Absolute "file:" URLs under Windows95

For a link to a local file on another hard drive, is there any href format
usable by most popular browsers?

Amaya creates and accepts a format without the "file:" keyword, for example:

<a href="P:\USRMODEM\readme.html">US Robotics</a>

However, this format is not accepted by Netscape. My goal is to create a
local "homepage" usable by MS Internet Explorer, Netscape, Lynx, and Amaya.

For a local absolute URL, Netscape expects the "file:" keyword in a format
such as:

<a href="file://P|/USRMODEM/readme.html">US Robotics</a>

For this format, Amaya reports a leading slash in its status-line error: 
"Cannot load \P|/USRMODEM/readme.html"

Amaya also reports errors for all variations which I've tried, including a
colon instead of the vertical line, reversed slashes, escaped special
characters, and a different number of leading slashes. Amaya interprets some
of these cases as a relative URL. 

Unless I've missed some universally accepted format for absolute URLs to
local files, would it be appropriate for Amaya to accept the format used by
Netscape?