Date: Mon, 19 Jun 1995 22:20:13 +0930 (CST) From: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> To: dave@odyssey.ucc.ie (David B. O'Byrne) Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: What are the minimum Specs for a machine to run DOS/OS2 + FreeBSD Message-ID: <199506191250.WAA20246@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <9506190948.AA06385@csws2.ucc.ie> from "David B. O'Byrne" at Jun 19, 95 10:48:11 am
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David B. O'Byrne stands accused of saying: > Hi, I will be getting enough money to set up a lab of Machines. Lucky man! 8) > I want to be able to run OS2 DOS and FreeBSD That's reasonable. > My understanding was that in previous versions of FreeBSD (possibly > a generic problem with the PC archictecture) that very ladge disks > containing multiple operating systems was a problem. I believe the > problem stemmed from the root/boot partition needing to be below > 1024 so BIOS can boot the kernel from it. That's spot on. It's a generic PC problem; DOS and OS/2 get around it by making sure that their in-filesystem bootstrap programs are at the beginning of the disk. With FreeBSD this is not reasonable, and thus the entire partition containing the kernel must be within the first 1024 cylinders. > Am I correct ? I believe FreeBSD 2.? was supposed to add support for > something (sorry cannot remember what exactly) that would allow > easier support for this type of setup... There really isn't much that could be done, short of yet another stage in the bootstrap process, and it isn't really a problem unless you are planning on having a stupidly large filesystem at the beginning of the disk. How much disk are you planning to put on these machines? > David -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and [[ ]] realtime instrument control (ph/fax) +61-8-267-3039 [[ ]] My car has "demand start" - Terry Lambert [[
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