> As MS-Windows and other OSes
> advance, more computer users are likely to have no DOS-readable FAT16 partition.
> With MS-Windows, the entire hard disk may be in one FAT32 or NTFS partition, and
> there may be no real DOS at all in Win NT, 2000 or XP. Linux/Unix servers also
> might have no DOS at all, and then there are the non-i386 CPUs such as PowerPC,
> Alpha, Ultra Sparc and others.
As I recall worm's emergency boot disk uses DOS 7.1 precisely because it
runs on FAT 32 partitions. I believe, DOS 7.1 - the shell and 2 hidden
files will run all DOS 6.x software.
However, I do not quite understand why DOS 6.22 or less can not be
installed on a FAT 32 partitioned disk. The does files are just files
with one's and zeros in it. On the disk level, do the FAT tables of
a FAT 32 partition know or care what kind of files get stored on the
disk? I thought all the disk had to worry about is keeping track of
which directories and files are on which clusters of the disk.
I must be wrong somehow. Could someone enlighten me about the connections
or requirements between an OS and a disk partitioning system? Ah, I
just figured out something obvious: Clearly, the boot sector information
and file allocation table on disk are written in some kind of binary
language code. So I suppose, for instance, only windows NT knows how
to read the disk information stored on a NTFS partitioned disk. Is that
the main problem?
-------------------------------
Howard Schwartz
-------------------------------
theo "at" ncal.verio.com
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