Message-Id: <199908140358.XAA19502@pop06.iname.net>
To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
From: "Rob McGee" <i812 AT iname DOT com>
Subject: Re: Compiling opendos...easier now?
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 22:55:17 -0000
References: <199908120049 DOT UAA17713 AT kanga DOT INS DOT CWRU DOT Edu> <v03102801b3d906ab6f5b@[198.79.105.21]>
Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com

On Thu, 12 Aug 1999 16:21:37 -0700  Michelle Klein-Hass <mhass703 AT 2cowherd DOT net> wrote:

>I'm about to set up a triple boot between DR-DOS, Slackware Linux and
>FreeBSD. Anyone on the list have ideas on how to accomplish this?

I triple-boot two of the above three (I have NT4 instead of FreeBSD.)
NT boot loader owns the first drive's boot sector, and it gives a
choice of NT & DR-DOS. Then, the two first lines of my DR-DOS
config.sys are these: (Ctrl-I/Tab characters excluded)
	Timeout 5
	? "Boot Linux instead?" chain = c:\linux.sys
and the linux.sys file is a single line:
	shell=c:\loadlin\loadlin.exe c:\loadlin\zImage root=/dev/hda5 ro

Loadlin is flexible and easy, IME, and pretty fast, too. If I wanted
Linux as default (which I eventually will, on this machine) I'd use
	? "Boot DOS instead?" chain = c:\dos.sys
as the second line of config.sys, and the linux.sys shell line would
follow. The DOS stuff would be moved into dos.sys, of course.

My Slackware is a converted ZipSlack installation, and that's how I
got started using Loadlin. I have two other machines using LILO, and
I think Loadlin is every bit as fast and as good as LILO. The only
reason I switched to LILO on them was because I needed to recover the
partitions used for FAT volumes.

There are countless ways to multi-boot. Insofar as multi-booting DOS
systems is concerned, I myself am partial to the menu scheme used by
MS-DOS 6+, but only because I've used it more. The DR-DOS way is just
as good. But going into DOS only works with Linux because of Loadlin;
I have no idea if FreeBSD has a similar DOS tool available.

IBM's boot loader is another good option. I've used the one which was
supplied with Partition Magic, and I'm sure it could do it. A limit I
discovered there was that DOS would only boot off of the first
partition of the first IDE drive. That also applies to Win9x systems,
AFAIK. But Linux & NT can be in other places. (I've read about a need
to keep below physical cylinder 1024 for Linux, but I am not sure how
or when that applies.)

Good luck,
    Rob McGee
    i812 AT iname DOT com