Re: off topic: enhanced DOS ?

["M.W. Poirier" poirmw@xxxxxxxx]

  Thank you. There is a whole lot to digest here. M.W. Poirier

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On Wed, 27 Aug 2003, J. R. Fox wrote:

> "M.W. Poirier" wrote:
>
> >  I'm in the market for a new system which would have a 80G hard
> >  drive. I'd like to run Windows 97, second edition, on it, and
> >  DOS 2000, which I understand is the latest version. My goal
> >  is to place DOS 2000 in one partition and Windows 98 in another.
> >  Does what you say below also apply to the above operating systems?
>
> Absolutely -- the basic principles remain constants. For example, you can only
> have 4 primary partitions per hard drive, one of which must be given over to the
> "Extended" partition that serves as a container for all of your Logical
> partitions. To the best of my knowledge, all MicroSoft operating systems up until
> the advent of NT *required* that they be installed on a Primary partition C:. (You
> can have two C drives, provided they are both Primaries, and only one of them is
> active at a time, the non-active one being temporarily hidden or invisible.) The
> later 32-bit operating systems (OS/2 from version 3 on, NT and its MS successors)
> allowed you to install them on a Logical drive partition, such as J:, where I have
> the main W2K partition. However, you might still encounter some complications or
> limitations, depending on the drive geometry and other factors, mostly having to do
> with cylinder boundaries, and how far out you happen to be from the beginning of
> the drive. On some hard drives, earlier versions of OS/2 could not be installed
> unless it fell inside the 4G, or in some cases the 8G boundary. The current
> release of EcomStation (successor to OS/2) has greatly improved on that, but I
> believe there is still a distance limit. In order to have the W2K partitions be
> bootable that far out, I had to put specific boot loader code at the beginning of
> the first C: (FAT-16) Primary.
>
> [I think that Unix / Linux is a whole 'nother ballgame, with some different rules,
> and, not knowing what I'm talking about there, I'll keep my trap shut.]
>
> Anyway, in regard to DOS, you'll need to follow this sort of a plan. Have at least
> one C: that is FAT-16 and given over to DOS. (If you have two C drives -- say, the
> second one belonging to W98 -- or any other multi-OS arrangement, you will need
> some utility like System Commander to mediate your boot-up options. NT and W2K
> *came with* a very bare bones utility that could do this. I don't know about
> earlier or later Win versions.) It is best to have your DOS app.s not too far away
> from the DOS partition. And anything that DOS, or DOS app.s and utilities must be
> able to see needs to exist in FAT-16 space that falls inside the 8G boundary.
> DOS-based programs like Partition Magic or Drive Image may be able to see the whole
> drive, regardless, but may be constrained in their operations, unless you have the
> latest versions. I get all of my DOS stuff out of the way early, and leave later
> drive space to the 32-bit OSes. But still, if there is some tricked-up version of
> DOS out there I don't know about, which can see and access much larger chunks of
> drive real estate, I would certainly be interested.
>
> It is a good idea to map out on paper the desired layout for your new, larger hard
> drive, before you actually roll up your sleeves and get to work on it.
>
> Jordan
>
>