PE> When I install OS/2 on my 4th drive (in a FAT partition below the 500 meg
PE> limit), it installs the first 7 disks or whatever, and then reboots. After
PE> the reboot, it says "no operating system, system halted"
or whatever.

Which seems to suggest that there may well be something seriously fucked
about its attempt to reboot into the minimal OS/2 its just installed, so
it can do the rest under OS/2. Presumably it manages to comprehensively
lose track of what that partition is about or something.

PE> I think that is a sign of the special "reboot this
partition" command
PE> not working rather than the system being unable to boot off the 4th drive.

Its quite likely, but you really cant say that too definitively.
You really dont know if it could boot that partition successfully
from scratch after a full install, say on another machine.

PE> Because, after I reboot after that message,
PE> through boot-manager, I do get the OS/2 logo etc,

Dunno, from memory you should have a fully bootable partition at that stage,
so it should boot right up completely. Just be a very minimal install. You
said that all the files had gone bye bye, so its more complicated than that.

PE> it's just that when it's loading it then says "OS/2 can't read the
PE> disk".  I probably should have described that symptom more fully.

That indicates no more than the LOADER is functional. Thats very minimum
functionality tho and may well be something extremely primitive location
wise. So the considerations that apply to mapping a completely different
to the situation where you should be able to see the file structure etc.

PE> Anyway, Linux is also installed on a partition below the 500
PE> meg limit, and it is now booting cleanly, via boot manager.

Which seems to indicate that the AMI bios LBA support cant be too fucked.

PE> Now I'm on to the next problem with Linux - why does it recognize
PE> my CDROM if I boot via floppy, but not when I boot via hard disk?!

I basically gave up on it, dinosaur technology at that level.
@EOT:

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