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After my co-Linux/DOS/Win95 on a 701C install troubles a few weeks,
ago, I managed to tame Win95 and get it to act less hostile towards
other OSes on the hard drive. Here's what happened after Win95 wiped
out [sic] all my data:
A sector went bad on the Linux swap partition, foiling an attempt to
reinstall Linux. I completely repartitioned to put the bad sector in
a (little-used) DOS partition. While doing this and installing OS/2's
boot manager, the hard drive completely died, locked up. The machine
refused to even boot if the hard drive was installed.
Called up EZServ. Sent it in. Got a call next day saying some of the
parts were out of stock and it'd be a while. Got the machine back a
week later. They also fixed a lose keyboard and replaced the cracked
case caused by me forgetting to unplug the AC adapter and walking off
with the machine. They replaced the system board to try to fix the
static on the headphone jack problem, but it only fixed it for the
right speaker. There's still static on the left speaker. I also
found a crack on the side of the top lid. I can't determine if it was
there before the EZServ. This is the first time an EZServ repair has
taken >48 hours for me, but considering they fixed something I broke
(the case), I'm happy.
Anyways, back to my install story. The machine came with a new hard
drive with all the original software. I'd since made Linux boot
floppies with ncftp on them so I was able to back everything up this
time. Whoopee.
First I tried to install all three OSes, using LILO to switch between
them. I discovered that you can have more than one primary partition
visible to DOS/Win, and they're assigned drive letters according to
the order they're on the disk. Since Win95 insists on its own C:
partition, it would interfere with DOS, so LILO wouldn't do what I
wanted.
OS/2's boot manager only allows one active primary partition. It
will switch the unused primary partitions to type 13(?), unknown,
which effectively hides it from DOS/Win. This means DOS and Win95
can each have separate C: drives without knowing about the other's
existence.
After I'd gotten boot manager installed things went smoothly except
for one hitch: Adding a logical drive to the front of the extended
partition can reassign disk labels. My linux boot partition got moved
from /dev/hda6 to /dev/hda7. I was able to boot off floppies (LILO:
linux hd=699,32,63 root=/dev/hda7), reconfigure LILO and reinstall it.
I've been led to believe that Linux is independent of drive labels so
hopefully this won't cause any problems. In retrospect, this is
probably what happened the first time when I thought Win95 had wiped
out my partition table.
So here's how I got everything to work:
1. Partition everything using OS/2's fdisk (run OS/2 fdisk and it'll
install boot manager, then reboot):
primary partitions:
boot manager /dev/hda1
DOS boot (C:) /dev/hda2 FAT
Win95 boot (C:) /dev/hda3 FAT
extended partitions: /dev/hda4
Win95 (D:) /dev/hda5 FAT
DOS data (E:) /dev/hda6 FAT
Linux /dev/hda7 ext2
Linux swapfile /dev/hda8 swap
Make sure you put DOS, Win95, and Linux in boot manager's menu.
Use Linux fdisk to set the type on the Linux partitions
2. Boot, get OS/2 boot manager, select to boot DOS. It'll come up
as "system files not found" since there's nothing there, but it'll
set the DOS C: partition to active, and the Win95 C: partition to
inactive. That's all you want.
3. Install DOS. Since the DOS C: partition is active, it'll install
there. It'll also insist on formatting the D: and E: partitions
but you want to do that anyway. Install DOS.
4. DOS has deactivated boot manager and set itself to bootable, so
run DOS fdisk. Set the boot manager partition as the startup
partition. Reboot.
5. Boot manager comes up again. This time pick Win95. It'll give
the error about system files again since we haven't yet touched
the Win95 C: partition, but the DOS C: partition is now inactive
while the Win95 C: partition is active.
6. Install Win95. It'll disable boot manager as well. You'll have
to boot off floppy and run fdisk to set boot manager to startable
again.
7. Install Linux normally. Put LILO on the Linux partition (i.e.
/dev/hda7 in my case). When boot manager tries to boot Linux,
it'll find LILO there and run it, which will start up Linux.
(I did this step first, which caused some of the problems I've
described above. In generally, install the easiest things first
and the hardest things last. That way if you have to start over,
you don't have to do as much work. :)
So I now have a system which brings up OS/2's boot manager at startup.
I can pick DOS, Win95, or Linux and they all run without interfering
with each other (except the DOS/Win95 C: drives are not visible to each
other, no big deal).
I'll withdraw my statements about Win95 trashing my hard disk. Its
hostility towards other OSes certainly made it easier for me to lose
my data while repartitioning, but upon reflection I don't think it was
directly responsible.
Win95 has a slick interface, I'll give it that. The UI also seems
faster than OS/2's at certain critical points (disk management,
sounds, etc.). I still manage to crash it or put it in an unusable
state once every couple days, much more frequently than OS/2 or Linux,
but I consider it a vast improvement over Win3.1. Its "multitasking"
still stinks compared to OS/2 and Linux, but I got it so I could use
long-filenamed HTML documents with a 64k color web browser, and it
does that well. Given the vast amount of real estate it takes on my
hard disk and the improvments over Win3.1, I'm not sure I'll put
Win3.1 on my E: drive.
BTW, I was able to install Smartsuite CD from a friend's desktop via
a parallel laplink cable and Win95's networking. DOS's Interlink(?)
should also do the job.
Hardware is a TP701C DX4/75, 8MB RAM (going to 24 after I get my tax
refunds ;), 720MB hard disk. Does anyone know about putting a larger
hard drive in this baby?
Incidently, the crack in the lid has IMHO compromised the stiffness
of the lid, putting the LCD at risk if I put an uneven stress on it
(i.e. toss it in my backpack with a thick boot next to it). It's
going back for EZServ soon.
--
John H. Kim "Just try telling the IRS you don't feel like
jokim@mit.edu 'contributing' this year come April." -- Bob Dole
jokim@tuna.mit.edu on Bill Clinton's avoidance of the word 'taxes'