Date: Thu, 9 Nov 1995 13:04:25 -0800 (PST) From: Donald Burr <d_burr@ix.netcom.com> To: Gary Stanny <stanny@laa.com> Cc: questions@freefall.freebsd.org, gary@laa.com Subject: Re: FreeDBS & WIN 95 on the same box Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.951109125659.27182C-100000@ncc-1701-d> In-Reply-To: <9511091821.AA09747@handset.laa.com>
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On Thu, 9 Nov 1995, Gary Stanny wrote: > #1 - I'll be needing to put up both Win 95 & FreeBSD. I am planning > to put up Dos 6.22 first, then FreeBSD 2.0.5 (now 2.1 soon) and then > finally upgrading DOS to Win95. Is this OK or does FreeBSD need to go > in first? And when do I install the boot manager (booteasy ?). That's a good strategy. Install the boot manager AFTER everything (INCLUDING FreeBSD) is installed -- the FreeBSD installer has an option to do this, or you can install an alternate boot manager after you've gotten everything to work right (some can even be installed from DOS). > #2 - I'm getting a 1.2 Gig drive & plan on spliting up as 700MB for DOS > & 500 MB for FreeBSD - is this OK? That *SHOULD* be ok, so long as your FreeBSD ROOT partition is below the 1024 cylinder mark. Most BIOS's do what is called "LBA mapping", to get around the BIOS's 1024-cylinder limitation. For example, if a large IDE disk normally has 1600 cylinders, 8 heads, and 16 sectors/track [these are numbers I just pulled out of my head, and aren't real] a BIOS that does LBA mapping will "coerce" DOS into thinking that the disk has, say, 600 cylinders, 24 heads, and 16 sectors/track [again, purely spurious numbers]. That way, "dumb" operating systems like DOS can still access the whole of the disk, without having to install special (memory-resident) boot code, like OnTrack Disk Manager. I think the key is that FreeBSD and the BIOS have to agree on the geometry of the disk, in order for everything to be hunky-dory. There was recently a somewhat long-winded discussion of this on the mailing lists, you might want to see if you can get it from somewhere, or ask the original participants, since I don't quite know much about IDE myself (I put my system together strictly SCSI-based, from day one, to avoid these unnecessary complications.) > #3 - Here is the hardware I'm getting - does anyone see anything wrong? > > a GBT 486DX4-120 MHz PCI motherboard > 16 MB ram > 1.275 Conner EIDE drive > PCI High-Speed EIDE interface > PCI Cirrus Logic 5434 64-bit 1MB video card > Soundblaster Pro with 2X speed CDROM Oops. FreeBSD does not support EIDE at this time (or so I read in the source code and the README's). A regular IDE controller will work, though. Other than that, this looks pretty good, although (I'm not sure) the video board may not be fully supported under X. Check the XFree86 README's, etc.--if it's supported, it will be listed. Donald Burr [d_burr@ix.netcom.com], PO Box 91212, Santa Barbara CA 93190-1212 TEL (805)564-1871 // FAX 564-2315 // WWW http://www.physics.ucsb.edu/~dburr PGP Public Key available by request (send e-mail) or Public Key Servers. ** Uphold your right to privacy - Use PGP. **
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