[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> - BIOS imposes the current partitioning scheme opon us, and limits the >> number of primary partitions to four (not true - BIOS knows nothing >> about partitions and doesn't care either).
> It does have the "1024 cylinders" problem though. Only because of backwards compatibility. Two ways to deal with the problem exist on modern BIOSes: - CHS translation, effectively moving the limit from 504 MB to about 2 GB, without losing compatibility with DOS. - A new BIOS interface, moving the limit to about 2 TB, losing compatibility with DOS. Take your pick. What many people seem to be confused about is that many, if not most, decisions concerning this stuff are driven by market forces requiring backward compatibility. Let me state _again_ that the BIOS is nothing but a piece of software in a PROM - it can easily be altered should the market so request. The design of the PC is flexible enough here. > As I understand it, (at least with DOS/windows/OS2), you can only "see" one > primary partition _per disk_. This was also what various HOWTO's seemed to > say. No, no, NO! How many times do I have to say this: I HAVE MULTIPLE PRIMARY DOS PARTITIONS, AND BOTH DOS AND WINDOWS '95 SEE ALL OF THEM! What does it take to convince you that I'm not lying?! Do I need to mail an output of DOS fdisk perhaps? Or would you then think I forged that? <Taking a deep breath> The only problem with multiple primary DOS partitions that both DOS and W95 have, is that their fdisk refuses to create more than one. For a workaround, and more details, see the docs of my boot manager (see sig). Once created, they are seen and accesible. > The fact that windows (95 and NT) cannot use partitions properly - they > *require* that they are on the first primary partition on a disk - means > that partitioning is _alot_ of hard work (trust me - I've spent a week > reinstalling things and messing around). I doubt if you've spend as much time partitioning as I have developing my boot manager ;-) I have very little experience with NT, but I know for a fact that Windows '95 does _not_ require to be installed to the first primary partition of a harddisk - on my harddisk, it is installed on the fourth. The requirements are: - It must be installed on the first harddisk. This requirement goes for both DOS and W95; for DOS 6.22 and 7.0 (the DOS part of W95) there is a workaround if there are no primary DOS partitions on the first harddisk. - The active flag must be set to the booted partition. If W95 is booted from the fourth partition, but the active flag is set to the first, it will hang. > One feature I look for in a design is easy modification in the future > (which is normally always needed for one reason or another). The PC having come this far, I'd say it apparently was modifyable enough to give us Pentium PCs without losing the ability to run DOS. Your list of things you object to is not exhaustive, and some of it I agree with; I am not defending everything to do with PCs, I just hate to see misinformation - especially on a list otherwise so helpful and accurate. > - allowing spaces in filename - *completely* *braindead* kilu:~$ > "Filename with spaces" kilu:~$ ls Filename with spaces I assume you are now going to tell me that the Linux "design" is completely braindead too? Or perhaps different rules apply to operating systems you like than to operating systems you don't like? Gertjan. -- Gertjan Klein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Boot Control home page: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gklein/bcpage.html -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
