Re: Partitioning; Xy out of box

["Patricia M. Godfrey" pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

I've used both Partition Magic and System Commander (on other people's
machines; for myself, I always buy no-name clones, partition the drives
with an older DOS, and then install whatever OS I'm going to use), and
prefer the latter. I belive the latest version includes a partitioning
module, but it may not work with XP yet. (Micro$oft, of course, makes it
very difficult for such utilities to work with its OS, because it
absolutely doesn't want anyone using anything it hasn't made.)
	On the matter of out-of-the-box defaults, unexpanded printer drivers,
missing install disks, and the like: would it be a good idea to do a
clean install on a DOS PC (while there are any left around), including
ALL available printer drivers, of each version of XyWrite, and archive
the resulting setup somewhere? I cannot do it right now, because my old
486 is tied up with a project and doesn't have a big enough hard drive.
But once that's done, I could expand 3.5, 4.012, and 4.017 (did I see
someone mentioning a 4.018?), and XyWin (under Win 3.11), write them to a
ZIP disk, and then to a CD-R on my Win95 machine. For one thing, I
believe XyDOS and XyWin will often RUN OK on 32-bit OSes on which they
have trouble INSTALLING. With an expanded version around, one could copy
it to one's drive, tweak any settings, and perhaps prolong its
usefulness.
	By the by, I agree entirely about the necessity of being able to get
down and dirty with DOS. The A+ exam still requires one to know all about
fdisk and format, and even EMM386.EXE and allocating conventional memory.
Patricia