From: "Matthias Paul" <PAUL-MA AT reze-1 DOT rz DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
Organization:  Rechenzentrum RWTH Aachen
To: opendos AT delorie DOT com, mike AT lvconstruction DOT com
Date:          Thu, 14 Sep 2000 18:41:36 +0100
Subject:       Re: Fw: does DR-DOS dynamically assign the drive letters at
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.22
Message-ID: <1A202177373@reze-1.rz.rwth-aachen.de>
Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com

Hi Mike, hi Florian, 

[Since this ended up in a public forum, I did not truncated the 
original email for reference to Mike.]
> From:           "Florian Xaver" <dos DOT fire AT aon DOT at>
> To:             <opendos AT delorie DOT com>
> Subject:        Fw: does DR-DOS dynamically assign the drive letters at boot?
> Date sent:      Tue, 12 Sep 2000 19:01:13 +0200
> Send reply to:  opendos AT delorie DOT com
> 
> -----Urspruengliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Mike Anderson <mike AT lvconstruction DOT com>
> An: florianx AT drdos DOT org <florianx AT drdos DOT org>
> Datum: Dienstag, 12. September 2000 18:35
> 
> >I am about to upgrade from NW 3.2 to NW 5.1.  I have a 20MB DOS partition
> on
> >the primary drive that is currently assigned the drive letter C.  I also
> >have a 1.2GB drive that has one primary DOS partition that is currently
> >assigned the drive letter D (which has the NWSERVER directory on it).  I
> >need to use the 1.2GB drive to for the 5.1 installation but I don't think
> >that the Novell installation program will allow me to choose drive D for
> the
> >install.
> >
> >My question is, does DR-DOS dynamically assign the drive letters at boot?

DR-DOS uses the same method to assign drive letters as MS-DOS/PC DOS:

First all active primary partitions from drives 80h..FFh (there can
be only one on each drive).
Then all logical drives in extended partitions again from 80h..FFh.

When there is no active primary partition on physical drive 80h,
drive letter C: should be assigned to the active primary 
partition on physical drive 81h. 

You can verify this by just removing the active state of the primary
partition on drive 80h and thereby can avoid deleting the partition. 
However, you will probably need to boot off drive A: then.

DR-OpenDOS 7.02/DR-DOS 7.02 also had a provision to boot of any 
physical disk, not only 00h or 80h, but this was removed for 
DR-DOS 7.03.

Some BIOS Setups may have a facility to swap physical drive 
assignments. You could also use such an option to install NetWare 
on the other drive without a need to patch around in the MBRs...

> >If that is the case, I should be able to delete the current C partition,
> >reboot the machine to a floppy, make the existing 1.2GB drive bootable
> >(which is now C because DOS has dynamically assign that letter to the first
> >and only DOS partition) and end up with what I want.
> >
> >If not I will have to backup the files on D, delete the partitions on C and
> >D , recreate the partition on the 1.2GB drive (which will be C) and restore
> >the  files to the 1.2GB (C) drive.
> >
> >Thanks for your answer.

Hope it helps,

 Matthias

PS: If this does not work, I would like to know... 

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Matthias Paul, Ubierstrasse 28, D-50321 Bruehl, Germany
eMail: <Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
Web  : http://www.rhrz.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html
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