IBM PC disks

[MARK LEVY]

ku>From: kjh at pollux.usc.edu (Kenneth J. Hendrickson N8DGN)
ku>Orga: EE-Systems, Univ. of So. Calif., Los Angeles

ku>I have heard that MS-DOS (yech!) can only handle fixed disks of 32 MB
ku>and smaller.  I assume that Xenix has no such limit.  My question is
ku>this:
   MS-DOS 3.3 and earlier versions were only able to deal with 32MB
partitions on a hard drive, although aftermarket drivers like V-
Feature Deluxe, Speedstore, and Disk Manager (Mangler) allowed 
extended partitions greater than 32 MB.

ku>What do MS-DOS users do when they want to use a disk larger than 32
ku>MB? Do they partition the physical disk into many logical disks of
ku>32MB or smaller?  Do they use a seperate device driver that uses
ku>memory? [Perhaps do they abandon MS-DOS in favour of Xenix? :-)]
   Larger disks can be partitioned into primary and extended DOS
partitions using FDISK, and FDISK allows logical drive creation of
drives up to 32 MB (DOS 3.3).  Other "FDISK"s like NEC's, Compaq's,
and some others, support large partitions, greater than 32MB, as does
messy-dos 4.XX.

ku>What do people do when they want to use a large disk for both MS-DOS
ku>and Xenix?  Do they use the MS-DOS fdisk program to set up the
ku>partitions? Does Xenix come with a similar program?  Does the Xenix
ku>version of this program have the ability to set up partitions on
ku>MS-DOS disks?
   XENIX supports this.  What you have to do is first create the DOS 
partitions using the DOS FDISK.  You must make sure that the DOS 
partition is not the active partition, otherwise XENIX won't boot.
Then install the XENIX, and you'll be OK.  If you create a primary
and extended DOS partition, XENIX won't be able to access the 
extended DOS partition.  I don't know if XENIX can access the pri-
mary partitions greater than 32 MB.

Mark
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