Mail Archives: opendos/1997/02/10/02:56:27
Since I installed OD a couple weeks ago, I've been stuck with it.
Not that that is a bad thing, but some programs don't work quite
right under OD yet so I wanted to dual boot. Several people have
suggested different methods of doing this, and I checked out a
few of them and have got it to work.
I've got System Commander and have got a multi-boot now
set up with it. So far I've got OpenDOS and DOS 6.22 set up in
it with no apparent problems.
Here is what I did.
Since OpenDOS renamed the DOS 6.22 kernel files, etc, I renamed
them back to IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS. Then I unzipped the System
Commander package and read all of the documentation thoroughly.
Since installing software to your MBR is a kindof dangerous thing
to do, I decided to grab a fresh floppy and make a Norton Rescue
disk.
My system contains 2 physical drives. Drive 1 is 514M and drive
2 is 850M. Drive 1 contains the following partitions:
1) DOS C:
2) DOS extended (5, 6, 7 below)
3) Linux Native ext2fs (/ - root)
5) DOS E: (logical drive)
6) DOS F: (logical drive)
7) DOS G: (logical drive)
Drive 2 contains
1) DOS D:
2) DOS extended (5 and 6 below)
3) Linux Native ext2fs (/usr)
5) DOS H: (logical drive)
6) DOS I: (logical drive)
I've got both MSDOS 6.22 *AND* OpenDOS installed onto my C:
drive. (C:\DOS and C:\OPENDOS respectively). Both the OpenDOS
kernel files and the MSDOS kernel files are residing in my C:
root directory.
At this point the only problems are: How to pick which OS to
boot? And - How to resolve the CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT problems.
Well, after doing the Norton Rescue, I backed up ALL of my
configuration files for DOS/OPENDOS/WINDOWS, and then I installed
System Commander. I fiddled around with it for a while to try
and figure everything out, and then picked my OpenDOS
configuration.
OpenDOS booted straight and clean, just like a charm. I hit
reset and got the System Commander (refered to as SC from now on)
menu. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get DOS
6.22 to boot though. I figured that SC needed to somehow capture
a DOS 6.22 MBR though so I booted clean off of the DOS 6.22
installation disks and did a SYS C:. I feared that this might
cause HD problems or destroy SC, however I tried it anyway. At
this point I figured that I'd now be able to set up 6.22 on the
SC menu and then boot it ok, but that OD probably wouldn't work
anymore. Well, upon rebooting, I found out that I was right.
The DOS 6.22 SYS command toasted the OpenDOS kernel files. :o)
Upon reboot, SC detected that a new OS was installed and let me
add it to the menu. I then booted into 6.22 (from SC) and did an
UNDELETE which recovered the OpenDOS kernel files. Now when I
rebooted, I could pick either OS and they would both boot, but
now they were sharing CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT.
I rebooted and went into the SC boot menu again and went into
setup. I picked the FILE somethingorother menu where it lets you
pick which files get renamed/copied so that each OS can have it's
own AUTOEXEC.BAT, etc. I set ALL entries to "NONE" so that SC
didn't copy ANY files at all. At this point I could have let SC
take care of renaming the files and resolving the
CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT/COMMAND.COM problems, however I decided
to do it another way.
Since I don't use COMMAND.COM anyway, I put the DOS 6.22
COMMAND.COM into the C:\DOS\ directory where it belongs. I did
the same with the OPENDOS COMMAND.COM (C:\OPENDOS\). I then
called my OpenDOS CONFIG.SYS "DCONFIG.SYS", and my OpenDOS
AUTOEXEC.BAT "OPENEXEC.BAT". Then I deleted the directories that
SC made to store those files for each OS. (MSDOS6.22, NWDOS7.00)
and then I made sure that DCONFIG.SYS, CONFIG.SYS,
OPENEXEC.BAT, and AUTOEXEC.BAT were the proper files that they
were supposed to be. I then edited my DCONFIG.SYS and put a
command line switch on my SHELL= line to tell the command
interpreter to use a file called OPENEXEC.BAT instead of
AUTOEXEC.BAT.
(SHELL=C:\OPENDOS\COMMAND.COM /P:C:\OPENEXEC.BAT)
or
(SHELL=C:\4DOS\4DOS.COM /P:C:\OPENEXEC.BAT)
Now, I rebooted. I picked OpenDOS from SC, and it started up
beautifully. DCONFIG.SYS and OPENEXEC.BAT were parsed as
expected. I rebooted again and picked 6.22. CONFIG.SYS and
AUTOEXEC.BAT worked as expected too. The result is that now I
can boot either OS easily. So far neither interferes with the
other.
Problems:
1) I use QEMM 8.0 in MSDOS 6.22 and I have the Quarterdeck
Quickboot feature of QEMM turned on. Unfortunately System
commander comes up right away instead of 6.22 rebooting
itself. Is there a way to make System commander only come up
after a hard RESET?
2) Since I use Linux, the only way that I can get into Linux now
is to boot 6.22 and run LOADLIN. (Which is my normal method
anyways.) However, I would much rather boot Linux from System
Commander now. Anyone know how to boot Linux from System
Commander directly? Do I need to somehow install LILO on my
native Linux BS? Or can I have SC directly run LOADLIN
itself?
Other than these 2 VERY minor problems (that don't actually have
anything to do with DOS anyway) I'm pretty satisfied with my
multiboot setup right now. I'm also interested in hearing what
other people's experiences with SC and OpenDOS have been.
I hope that this will help others to get a multiboot setup up and
running.
TTYL
Mike A. Harris | http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~mharris
Computer Consultant | My webpage has moved and my address has changed.
My dynamic address: http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~mharris/ip-address.html
mailto:mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca
RHIDE: Current version 1.10
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