Greetings,

I think that I had stated that I sent your comments to my computer guru
who had set up my hard drives.  Forwarding his reply.
-----

 * Originally in: Internet E-MAIL
 * Originally on: 07 Nov 99  22:32:02
 * Originally by: hwsager@gatewest.net
 * Originally to: Linda Proulx

Apparently-to: linda.proulx@universe.pangea.ca
From: "Hartmut W Sager" 
Subject: Re: Get Going
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 03:32:03 -0600

> Continuing on the info I sent last time.
>
>  * Originally by: Andy Roberts
>  * Originally to: Linda Proulx

He continues to display a very deep knowledge of these things.

You did confuse him somewhat with careless usage of "drives" and "C", "D",
etc.  You should always refer to your physical disks as "Drive 1", "Drive
2", etc. (which Norton Utilities does too, when you select physical disks).

>  LP> None are seen as extended logical drives
>
> Possible but not likely.

He's right that it's not "likely", but you are right on this one regarding
your drives in YOUR machine.  I set it up in this unusual way, and gave you
a considerable explanation on the matter.  We can talk about it again.

In fact, I plan to print out these messages and go over them with you in
detail on the phone, partly to help explain what he's saying, partly to
determine your thoughts, and also to add my thoughts.

> I think this is a misunderstanding of definitions.
> Start by considering it is not the "drive" that is "Extended Logical", but
> rather the partitions on the drive that are "Extended Logical".  ........

Yes, like I said, you confused him with your terminology.

> .......  OTOH if all your partitions were "primary", then none of them
> would be able to see any of the others on the same HD.  [It's after 1AM,
so I
> hope I got that right.  If not, someone else will correct me, I'm sure.
]

This is a common belief, but wrong, at least for DOS and Win95.  These 2
OS's do see all the primary partitions on a single hard drive.  Your machine
is living proof (at least for DOS).  I can't swear to it, but I'm almost
sure that OS/2 would also see them all.

If you explain this to him, he'll no doubt ask how the heck (and possibly
why the heck) you created 4 primary partitions on one drive, since FDISK
will refuse to directly do this.  The answer to "how" is that I used my bag
of tricks - a combination of FDISK and Norton Utilities.  "Why" is a much
longer story.

>  AR>> Make sure all of the partitions you want to install an OS on are
within
>  AR>> the 1st 1023 cylinders. WinXX (and those apps) like a primary
partition.
>
>  LP> And this means?
>
> The 1023 cylinder limit topic has been discussed so many times, that I'm
sure
> someone else will fill you in with great detail.  If not, then review some
of
> JdeBP's excellent technical discourses on that topic.

I'll be happy to explain this to you (again) on the phone.  The very short
explanation is:  The classical PC BIOS cannot access boot code that is
located past cylinder 1023.  This has NOTHING to do with megabytes - it's
true of any size hard disk, large or small.

>  LP> All 1 G drive partitions have 16 bit cluster, all smaller ones have
8.

The 1 GB partitions have clusters of 16 KB (16 kilobyte) size, and the
smaller ones have clusters of 8 KB size.  Both use 16-bit integers in the
cluster table (which is the FAT) to represent the clusters (that's what
FAT16 means).

>  AR>> Normally I would suggest you make both C and D primary
>
>  LP> From what I gather, all partitions are considered primary, no
>  LP> logical extensions.

Once again, you are correct.  I gave you a very unusual setup.  It looks
like, even for this experienced guy, there's always a first time for
something new.  At least he didn't say "impossible", just "unlikely".

Please feel free to forward my comments to him.
---

Anon,

Linda
--- MultiMail/MS-DOS v0.32
7102/1