Mail Archives: opendos/2001/06/26/00:53:35
In <000801c0fddd$a41ae680$5208e289 AT mpaul>, on 06/25/01
at 06:31 PM, "Matthias Paul" <Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de> said:
>> Lineo certainly isn't giving any support, or even an
>> directions on where to find support.
>Last time I checked them, they were refering to Florianīs
>http://www.drdos.org, which I think is the best DR-DOS
>related site around at the moment.
I didn't see it there, but I have managed to find my
way to it.
>But yes, Lineo itself do not provide any kind support to
>end users. Itīs a shame.
>> From all my reading of e-Mail lists, I have been lead
>> to believe that DR DOS can be installed to the Drive D: in
>> my setup above.
>Well, it should work, but Alain mentioned it several times,
>that the DR-DOS boot partition must be the first one.
Some times it can take a while before things sink in
and I comprehend.
>So far I never had problems booting of other primary
>partitions, but it could happen that my DR-DOS partition
>always was the first one. I will have to retest this
>the next time I will partition a harddisk.
Don't worry about it for me. I think this issue
is pretty well resolved in my mind.
>If it does not work, than I would consider this as being
>a bug and it would require a fix - which gives a deadlock
>in the current situation with stalled offical development.
>> And, if it is, where do I find info telling me how
>> to do it?
>In general, all you need to do is setting up the active
>partition flag in the Master Boot Record (MBR). You can
>do this with a disk editor, but also many FDISK utilities
>will allow you to change the "active partition". (This is
>what you were refering to as "assigning drive letter C:"
>in the FreeDOS mailing list, which is a wrong description
>of what happens at system level:
Break Break Time OUT.
No, it is not wrong. I am coming from a totally
different direction, place, where I don't think you
have ever been. I have experienced what I am talking
about for twenty years or so. It goes against Bill
Gates wishes for control.
"Assigning drive letter C:" is more than just
setting a partition active.
In the current setup I have the following 4
"primary type" partitions
First Primary - Drive C:
Second Primary - Drive C:
Third Primary - Drive C:
Extended Partition
Now, the above is a slight overstatement ( for getting
attention purposes ) because of course there can not be
three Drive C: partitions.
I used OS/2's Fdisk to create these partitions. It has
a function called "Assign Drive C:." So one of the three
partitions will have the drive letter C: assigned to it and
the other two will not have ANY drive letter assigned to them. The Drive
C: partition will be the active partition.
Now, I have experimented and used a DOS Fdisk, and it
will move the "Active" assignment from one partition to
another. However, it will not move the Drive C: assignment.
So, a DOS Fdisk can not be used to change which of the three
partitions will be bootable. OS/2's Fdisk can and some of
the Boot Managers can.
GAG is the only boot manager other than OS/2's that I
have any experience with.
The going back twenty years bit is with Zenith's
improved versions of MS DOS. Zenith would replace Microsoft's Fdisk with
a program they called "Part.exe." It behaved the way OS/2's Fdisk
behaves.
With part, one could create up to 4 primary partitions on a hard
drive. Each and everyone would be drive C:. Using "Part", the user would
decide which one to boot from.
Mr Gates didn't like that and did his best to wipe that
flexibility out.
> it just looks so to the
>user, because if the active partition is a valid DOS FAT
>partition, you will boot the OS that is loaded from the
>bootsector in that partition - and this DOS will assign
>drive letter C: to its boot partition.) Under DR-DOS,
>the other primary partitions will not be visible, while -
>as I learned recently - they will be visible (at the end
>of the drive letter chain) under newer issues of MS-DOS.
>In case you do not want the other partitions to be visible
>you can add 10h to the partition type indicator in the
>MBR, that is type 06h will become 16h. Many boot managers
>(including the IBM and Powerquest Boot Manager) will do
>this.
OK, that helps explain what I am seeing in the GAG
Boot Manager setup.
>Hope it helps,
Yes.
> Matthias
Thank you sir. I am trying to end this thread. You
keep writing and I feel obligated to reply. <G>
--
Don Woodall shooting electrons at you from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Computing with IBM's OS/2 Warp, Merlin Convenience Pack Beta, eCS
Communicating with Nick Knight's MR/2 ICE, Version 2.28a S/N 393.
This OS/2 system uptime is 5 days 23:40 hours :^( (en).
-----------------------------------------------------------
dlistwoodall AT home DOT com
-----------------------------------------------------------
- Raw text -