On Nov 24, 11:35*am, wrote:
On Nov 24, 5:54*am, klem kedidelhopper
wrote:





On Nov 23, 7:57*pm, who where wrote:

On Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:39:04 +0000 (UTC), "Geoffrey S. Mendelson"

wrote:
Drive letters BTW, are not C and D on the same drive if there is more than one
drive, it's C is the boot drive, D is the first partition on the second drive,
E is the second partition on the second drive and so on........

Not quite the case. *After C: and D: as above, E: (F:, G: etc) will be
the partitions on the first HD and THEN follow the partitions on the
second HD.

So at the risk of sounding like a dummy, is the FAT a function of the
particular hard drive or is it a function of the operating system? And
in my previous question, would a much smaller drive have a FAT 16
system that would be happy in the same bed as DOS 6.2? I need to run
6.2 as my programs run under that. I don't absolutely need to run
Windows on that computer. I have others, however it is handy at times
as some of my DOS documents occasionally are copied, pasted, and then
go out as emails.

If someone could please explain the FAT system with respect to Windows
and DOS I would be very grateful. Lenny

As Michael Terrell said the FAT is how the OS finds files. The OS
defines which version of FAT it uses. FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS can all be
on the same physical drive in separate partitions. I used to run
multiple OSs and had similar problems and got around them by using
Partitionmagic and Bootmagic to set up 3 partitions on the hard disc.
The first 2 were both 2 GB FAT16 and the 3rd was the remainder of he
disc as FAT32. At boot time Bootmagic gave a choice of DOS 6.22 or
Win98SE. The 3nd FAT 16 partition was visible to both OSs and used as
a 'transfer' block where you could place files for exchange between
the OSs. For example a file in DOS to be emailed using Win98 was first
placed in the transfer zone and reboot into Win98 and do the email
operation. I still have an Athlon 3200 machine dual boot DOS6.22 or
Win XP Pro, also with the transfer partition. I had an Athlon XP
machine at my last job that had DOS 6.22 in a FAT16 partition, Win98SE
in a FAT32 partition and Win XP pro in an NTFS partition with a 4th
FAT16 transfer partition visible to all OSs. It used Bootmagic to
select OSs and defaulted to XP if you didn't make a selection

The newer machines with the Phenom II chips will 'sort of' run DOS.
The boards no longer support DOS upper memory blocks (DOS high UMB) so
it's limited to 640K - that's it.

Don't know if this helps but it may give some ideas.

Happy Thanksgiving

G²- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Well here's the thing, I know that I did not format this master. I
don't recall if I ever formatted this slave. I'll explain. I bought a
machine from a guy for a dollar to use for parts. The machine was
working but it was a much lesser machine than this one is as I recall.
It had a working copy of 98 on the hard drive so I figured that it was
just the thing I needed to run my DOS billing program, wordperfect,
(WP51 for DOS).

I set that drive up in this computer as a master and then set up
another drive that had my program and files on it that was failing, as
a slave and although I couln't save the progam (luckily) through DOS I
managed to copy all 1200 billing files onto the master. A friend sent
me another copy of Wordperfect 5.1 for DOS, I installed that onto the
master and then copied the 1200 files onto it. This restored my
program. So after this I removed the flaky slave and installed another
physical drive of questionable origin and then through 98 copied the
entire WP folder from C to E. So now I have a backup copy on another
physical drive. I thought that this would be a prudent.endeavor. Now
that I'm out of the woods for the time being, I'll work on building
another computer with two formatted drives, and duplicate what I have
on this one now. Since I built this one I have also obtained a 98 SE
CD. So now I can start that new system from scratch. I know that all
this may seem silly for a DOS program however I'm used to the program,
and I like it so I really don't want to switch. Besides I like working
in DOS. I feel like I'm actually speaking to the machine as opposed
to answering "OK" or "yes" or "no" in Windows. Thanks to everyone who
is helping me. I reallly appreciate it. Have a happy Thanksgiving to
all who celebrate it, and watch out for the "turkeys". Lenny.