On 6/23/21 3:24 PM, Eric Auer wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> Really odd that MS DOS does not see the SATA,
> while FreeDOS apparently does? Maybe your SATA
> controller comes with an odd LBA-only BIOS?
>
> If your MS DOS is limited to 1.3 GB because
> of the IDE CHS geometry (which geometry is
> that, exactly?) then you should use the MS
> DOS of Win9x which supports LBA, or simply
> use FreeDOS, which also supports LBA and
> FAT32 :-)
I'm not actually finding that DOS is having any trouble with its partition
extending above 1.3 GB. It's just that I can't boot anything above that
line.
My DOS 6 environment is there to support a QEMM+Win3.11 setup, which simply
will not work on FreeDOS.
I do have a FreeDOS environment on the same partition for when I'm not
working
with that, and when the configuration was still single IDE I had Win95
on there
as well. I've been trying to get Win98 installed, but that's where the
1.3 GB
issue becomes problematic, as I'd like to have 2 GB for DOS (already
working)
plus at least 2 GB for Win9x, but whichever partition is second has to begin
below 1.3 GB or Grub chokes on trying to boot it.
Ideally, I wouldn't even have Win9x on the IDE drive as Win98 has
drivers that
will handle the SATA card, but, unfortunately, the Win98 installer isn't
actually a Win98 environment, and in any case, won't allow me to load
drivers
before the install, so it won't see the SATA drive.
>
>> I'm able to boot from the SATA card if the IDE drive is on the secondary
>> IDE channel, but not if it's on the primary channel.
>
> Apparently your BIOS insists to boot from
> whatever is primary, which sounds plausible,
> but unfortunately your SATA seems to work
> with your combined BIOSes when it also is
> primary? So why not just keep the SATA SSD
> as primary?
> You can still add the IDE as
> a secondary drive for any CHS-only DOSes.
Because when the SATA drive is present and the IDE drive is on the secondary
channel, no DOS, not even FreeDOS, will even see the IDE drive. FreeDOS will
see the SATA drive in any configuration, but MS-DOS never sees the SATA
drive,
and, like FreeDOS, only sees the IDE drive if it's on the primary
channel. Win95
will not see the SATA drive. Win98 should be able to see the SATA drive
if I can
get it installed with the proper drivers, but has the chicken-and-egg
problem
that its installer won't let me load drivers before it's already
installed (and
I'm not actually sure, once its installed, that the drivers will even be
loaded
before the Win32 environment comes up, so it may well not be able to
boot from
the SATA drive under any circumstances).
>
> Which is exactly the other way round as your
> current setup. I think both options should
> be okay. Why would you want to hide your SSD
> from DOS by making it unsupported secondary?
It's not hidden from FreeDOS under any circumstances, and it's not
visible to
MS-DOS under any circumstances (except maybe to MS-DOS 7 once Win98 and its
drivers for the SATA card are installed, but I'm not sure that WDM
drivers are
even loadable on Win9x in DOS mode. If not, then the SATA drive will
be visible to Win98, once it's booted, as a data drive, but won't be
usable as
a boot drive).
> Eric
>
> PS: You can even tell GRUB to reassign BIOS
> drive numbers before booting DOS, by keeping
> some small resident part active, I think.
>
I don't believe this is actually an issue with BIOS drive numbers. Note that
FreeDOS is perfectly capable of seeing and booting off the SATA drive
whether
it's primary or secondary, but doesn't see the IDE drive unless the IDE
drive is
primary.
Jon Brase
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
