Unless someone else has some experience with actually doing that, I'm afraid
that's just not the case. The original BIOS interfaces, which DOS uses,
have a limit of ~540MB. Newer BIOSes have an alternate set of interfaces
with a much higher limit. These interfaces use cylinder, head, and sector
numbers, and don't have anything to do with partitions. DOS itself manages
the partitions and filesystems and turns them into cylinder, head, and
sector references. Unless I'm mistaken, the BIOS doesn't have anything to
do with normal partitions, except during the initial boot.
Thus, if you have a BIOS with a 540MB limit, DOS is also limited to that
540MB. It won't be able to see anything over that (past the 1024th
cylinder), not even another partition. (Actually, it will be able to see
the partition table entry, which describes the partition, but won't be able
to access any data within the partition).
Linux is exempt from this limit (except at boot time), because it provides
its own routines for working with the disk drives, and doesn't use the BIOS
interfaces.
Windows 95/98 also provides some 32 bit disk access routines, which (I
think) don't use the BIOS interfaces, so it may also be able to access data
past the 540MB boundary if those 32 bit routines are enabled. The limit
then is based on the filesystem you choose. The FAT16 filesystem, used by
DOS, Win 3.1, and the first release of Win 95, has a 2GB limit.
Russell
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thursday, May 27, 1999 6:31 PM
Subject: Re: Dos HD limits
>Sounds like, Yes, I could have a secondary dos drive beyond the 1024th
>cylinder, of not more than 540 megs in which I could install extra programs
>and store data to be accessed by Win98.
>That's good, between the two 540MB partitions I'd have the 1 gig I need to
>do what I do.
>Then that leaves the other 2 gigs for linux which can handle the larger
>drive size without the disk mangler.
>Thankyou.
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