I also installed Debian on a machine and needed to preserve Win95 . (also AMD586) . It was a brand spanking Win95 dist. They now use FAT32 file system. Although it was very difficult to tell (no docs, no info) it looks like I could no longer make a vfat partition under win95. I could make an old fashioned msdos partition. Actually , it was difficult to tell what I was making. Debian 1.3 cannot mount a FAT32 partition. In fact kernels 2.0.x cannot . 2.1.x with x>something can mount them. There is a patch for the 2.0.x kernels, but it took me a while to install it. The patch maker had a different name for the source tree and a sym link to the source tree and mixed usage of both names. Then I had to jet the cd-rom module to get the kernel to compile (I never wrote him, so I am to blame too). I was trying to install from stuff I'd downloaded to the win95 fat32 partition. And I couldn't . Fortunatly , I had 4 Gigs and made another msdos partition (under window, it supported long names, but linux only recognised it as msdos with short names; and not as vfat at all) . Can someone make a rescue floppy with a patched kernel ? Another thing: Fips will not split a FAT32 partition. The same patcher has written fipsb, which will do it. However, a windows but causes this to break the win95 installation. I backed out repeatedly by restoring the MBR, but could never get win95 to boot except in MSDOS mode. I checked on the web, and it seems to be related to a bug that appears often independently of fipsb. MS has a web page on fixing it, but myself and others tried all the fixes and they don't work. I ended up wiping out windows and repartitoning and reinstalling.
By the way: this was my first relatively length exposure to win95. It is really worse than I imagined. It reminds my of a $200 000 000 Hollywood movie. I always say, "If I had to spend that money, I couldn't make a movie that bad if I tried" On Tue, 13 Jan 1998, smorrill wrote: > I have Win95 and Debian 1.3 on the same hard disk on my Amd 586 with > Doc's Boot as an MBR. Being still pretty new to Linux, here's a > question... I downloaded Netscape the other day for Linux, but had to > use Winbloze to do it 'cause I _still_ haven't got ppp working... > anyway, can I access the Win95 drive with Linux to retrieve Netscape? > > If so, how do I do that? I suppose I somehow need to set up Debian to > recognize the Win95 partition...just not sure how to go about it & don't > want to trash everything! (I've been known to do that!!) > > Any suggestions? > > TIA!! > > -- > Steve Morrill > > > Reply to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > PGP Pub key id: 0xF2459FCD > Debian LINUX.... Where I really want to go today! > > > > -- > TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] . > Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . > G John Lapeyre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Tucson,AZ http://www.physics.arizona.edu/~lapeyre -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .