Message-Id: Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 19:58:14 +0000 From: Matthias Paul To: opendos AT delorie DOT com, paul-ma AT reze-1 DOT rz DOT rwth-aachen DOT de Subject: Re: Loader comments Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Disposition: inline Precedence: bulk On 97-11-28 Dallas E. Legan wrote: >> For example, I use the OS/2 boot manager (in a selfcontained partition) >> [...] >do you have a special version of Loader, or am I missing something? >(Maybe the capabilities of the NT boot loader & Windows 95?) Don t know, I m using COD 7.02 B2 LOADER (and sometimes CCI s LOADER). Don t worry, it was just an example... >You seem to imply: >Boot Manager -> Loader -> NT boot loader -> NT > \ Linux\ various DOS's \ Win95 -> MS-DOS 6.22 > \ Warp \ PC-DOS 7 Yes, as far as your diagram has not suffered from these nasty proportional fonts on my machine... ;-) But however, that s only one possible solution out of many, many others. >On looking M.P.'s stuff over, maybe Loader uses a different >sector (Master or Partition) depending on whether it's on the >first Primary partion or not? Usually LOADER is loaded from the MBR of the active primary partition, and than loads its core from a hidden file image at unmoved position on the disk (which usually shows up in the FAT system, but as far as I know, can also exist even outside of the partitioning scheme, if you somehow would manage to put it there). If you select a boot file from the menu, LOADER will than load this file into memory applying the necessary fixups for the corresponding boot type (e.g. load position and registers, sometimes even patches to the file). If you select F1, LOADER will load the current standard boot sector from the C: partition, which spawn to whatever OS or other boot manager will be loaded by this code... The dual boot of Windows/NT and Windows95 can be loaded this way and so can be chained. It might be confusing, that though LOADER supports multiple OSes of the DR DOS family, (not counting DOS before 3.3) it by itself supports only one OS at a time out of the MS-DOS family (which includes PC-DOS, Windows95 and NT). This is just because of the restrictions these OSes imply during their boot process (mainly the fixed position of the files on disk). Other boot managers may work around this by dynamically copying these files to the correct positions; LOADER does not copy any files (it just loads them on demand), since this could also interfer with other OSes, even if not directly supported by LOADER. >> you can also use the older DRI or Novell LOADER, or the CCI LOADER, >> which uses a different configuration file format. There are alot of other >> boot loaders out in the wild: As long as they support DR DOS 6.0+ you >> can use them with OpenDOS. >Are you using any of these (See my first question.) ? See my answer above. ;-) In the past I also used PTS/Bootmanager, the older DRI and Novell LOADER, and sometimes Linux LILO. Also a freeware tool called BOOTSECT copying the files back and forth... All have their pros and cons... >What's this OS/2 1.x limit? Just what you've tested? >I'm using it right now with Warp 3.0 - you just point loader to >the file 'os2ldr' in the BOOT.LST file. Interesting... One more option to choose from... ;-) >One thing I've noticed is that sometimes after creating a file >with OpenDOS, then switching back to DR DOS 5.0, >I get an error message trying to access the file - it last >happened too long ago for me to remember any specifics. Interesting, are you using DELWATCH? Or LFNs? Matthias ------------------------------------------------------------ Matthias Paul eMail: Web: http://www.rhrz.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html