From: wolframt@cs.tu-berlin.de (Thomas Wolfram)
Subject: Re: To make 386bsd coexist with DOS partitions??
Organization: Technical University of Berlin, Germany
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 13:22:39 GMT

In article <X8X1DZF@mailgzrz.tu-berlin.de>, wolframt@cs.tu-berlin.de (Thomas Wolfram) writes:
> /* I for myself wroted a new master boot programm wait 5 seconds or
>   so for pressing <Esc> than booting the user default OS. Otherwise it
>   displays a "boot menu".
>   (I know there are many similar programs but if someone is interested
>   you can get the source from me (but it's a DOS assembler source also
>   works for 8088/80286)  */
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> I think it would be a good idea to do the same thing on 386BSD -
> grab a unused id Byte and use it forever to identify itself (if boot
> from floppy after crash or "upgrade" install) and prevent other
> OS install routines to use the 386BSD partition. Than up to 4 OS can
> co-exists on the disk without interfering. At the install time 386BSD
> should look in the partition table to determine whether a partition
> entry is free and enough space on the disk is available. A program
> similar DOS- or ISC-fdisk would be a good feature.
> 

This is followup to my own article. Because of the C like comment
some netters thought that was quoted and asked me where to get the
source but its my own program. Since I don't think that this is the
best master boot program in the northern galaxy look also around in
the net and compare. But nevertheless everyone who's interested
can get the source (or the DOS binary) from me. But actually I translate
all messages and the source comments from german to english.

Some informations:
There is no SAA desktop or something, no included fdisk (of course
it would be nice). Its a simple program but it comes with a installation
routine that backups the original master boot sector to a file. Than it
reads the partition table and displays it (which OS - a lot of id bytes
are known to the program - and whether the partition is bootable).
You can choose which OS is the default (also other than active partition).
Than you can create your own boot menu (with your OS names) from the
bootable partitions like:

MS-DOS............1
OS/2..............2
386BSD............3         (would be really nice)

or

dos  5.0..........1
os/2 2.0..........2
386bsd............3

How do you like it. You must not add all partitions to the menu.
An "uninstall" feature is included.
But: Actually you cannot change the boot timeout. 


-- Thomas

PS: There were three or four netters who want to try the program. Your
    addresses are lost! Please mail again.


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