Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!helios!inetg1!dprrhb From: dprrhb@inetg1.ARCO.COM (Reginald H. Beardsley) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: (PC/AT) Minix hard disk partition ???'s Message-ID: <1991Apr24.175619.2371@Arco.COM> Date: 24 Apr 91 17:56:19 GMT References: <1991Apr18.134014.46258@vaxb.acs.unt.edu> Sender: dprrhb@inetg1 (Reginald H. Beardsley) Organization: ARCO Oil & Gas Company Lines: 37 In article , jpc@fct.unl.pt (Jose Pina Coelho) writes: [text deleted] > All(maybe too strict ?) the OS's for the PC's are expecting a four > entry table, if you start it at a lower position to accomodate np > partitions, the first np-4 partitions would be ignored, and only the > last four would be recognized by those OS's. > So the first np-4 partitions would be used by minix ONLY. Coherent from Mark Williams puts a new boot sector with an 8 slot table on your drive (without any warning I might add) so it really isn't likely to be an OS issue. However, you only have 512 bytes to hold your code for the loader so it's tight as the larger table comes out of the 512 bytes. > So far so good, but don't use the partition editors of other OS's, > because the partitions they can't see would be considered as free > sectors, and you would end up with steped-upon minix partitions. Actually, as long as you are careful they won't get stepped on, but you would need to modify fdisk to use the other slots in the table. Otherwise you'ld have slots but no way to set them. BTW fdisk for DOS or some of the shareware jobs would very likely "help you out" by stepping on the other sectors. Minix fdisk won't. There are a number of hard disk boot sector routines around the archive sites which you should look at. Also the format is well described in "Writing DOS Device Drivers in C" -- Reginald H. Beardsley ARCO Information Services Plano, TX 75075 Phone: (214)-754-6785 Internet: dprrhb@arco.com