On 2012-11-11 22:44 (GMT-0500) Karen Lewellen composed: > Felix Miata wrote:
>> Maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen proof 7.03 cannot coexist with a >> "large" HD. Is it a lack of FAT32/>2GB partition support? That's her >> obstacle? > the dell inspirium 7500, <spelling> comes with a 12 gig hard drive. When Inspiron http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/psyd/specs.htm > we started the installation though, Dr dos via fdisk indicated only 7500 or > so, creating its first primary fat 16 partition at the 2 gig > level...although we would find later that such was not what the drive was > showing. > We then tried, first the minimal fat 32 support for the logical rives in > its extended partitions, then to create fat 16 ones. the former failed > totally. the latter worked only slightly. while there were variations > the experimenting, the logical drives were less than 2 gig in most cases > both as fat 16 and fat 32. what would happen at the fat 16 level was that > while the second and third, say e: and F: drives functioned fine, the d: as > in the line where the extended and primary met did not, general protection > errors, not allowing us to copy files or create directories, no allocation > units on that part of the drive. > We took a look with ranish finding over lapping partitions everywhere, the > actual c drive was 4 gig, the cylinder arrangement was off etc. although > we tired using ranish to create the partitions instead, Dr dos 7.03 simply > would not see them at all, no matter how divided, even as fat 16. > There are more details, but that gives You an idea. I did a little investigating and determined Novell DOS didn't include LBA support, so I'm not even going to look for my NDOS 7 floppies. It was late when I looked, so I don't remember whether I found out if DR DOS included LBA or not, but the investigation prompted me to perform some experiments with my PIII Dell laptop after swapping the installed HD for another purely to do this with, size 30GB. Using DFSee (running on FreeDOS), I wiped, forced geo to H255 S63 (required for maximum DOS partition size, I think), then created: FAT pri 2047M FAT pri 243M FAT pri 200M FAT log 2047M FAT log 2047M FAT log 2047M FAT32 log (balance of space) I then set the first active and booted FreeDOS kernel 2040. It reported various errors for all partitions. Then I did some math: 512 512 BPS 240 255 Heads 63 63 Sectors 7741440 8225280 Bytes per cylinder 7560 8033 divide by 1024 1890 2008 divide by 4 Then I repeated the first wipe and partition process, except for the sizes, while leaving the laptop BIOS default heads at 240: FAT pri 1875M FAT pri 243M FAT pri 200M FAT log 1875M FAT log 1875M FAT log 1875M FAT32 log 20664M (balance) On next FreeDOS kernel 2040 boot, it reported all (visible, skipping the 243 & 240) partition sizes without errors: C: 1875 MB D: 1875 MB E: 1875 MB F: 1875 MB G:20664 MB This result suggests to me that limiting partition sizes to less than the maximum sizes FAT16 supports, as I did on second try, might get her going without errors. I also tried other combinations. 255 63 geo with 2039M partitions also produced startup partition table errors, as did 255 63 geo with 2000M partitions. Switching back to 240 63 geo and 2037 partitions produced no errors. I still think it's worth trying smaller partitions. I do also suggest doing all partitioning, and formatting, with modern tools (other than Ranish), followed by "installing" DR DOS simply by doing 'SYS C:' from a floppy boot, then completing installation manually, or doing same without the size reductions, if you can't get DR DOS to install according to its own instructions. -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_nov _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
