elszgensa wrote on 2024-04-25, 15:20:That sounds more like a "because I can" than a "because it's useful" thing... but you do you. Here's some thoughts: […]
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That sounds more like a "because I can" than a "because it's useful" thing... but you do you. Here's some thoughts:
If you want to share a partition with DOS then that's gotta be a FAT16 one, limiting it to 2GB. Maybe you want to rethink that requirement? Would being able to see the DOS partition from Windows, but not the other way around, be good enough? nvm, I misread, cross-OS access doesn't seem to be a requirement.
Also, I'm not sure whether Win7 and 10 will still boot off of MBR partitioned disks (and too lazy to look that up rn)... I know they default to GPT at least. If they don't support the old style then they'll have to go on their own disk.
You might run into HDD size limits with various OSes, e.g. the 9x series support only up to 137GB (at least without third party patches). If you split that between a dozen OS installs then each one gets less... which might become an issue with the later ones, which are serious space hogs even for a bare bones install.
Sure Is something made for fun and for the challenge, not something I need for a professional environment, but I think this stands true for most amateur retro project and why most of us are here.
Maybe I have not made It clear in my opening post, and I apologize for that, but even though I have not entirely planned the disks/OS layout, the plan Is to use more then one disk over all, to partially circumvent the issues you were pointing with GPT requirements in newer OS (Windows 10 as you said, but also probably MacOS), and that's why I was talking about the possibility of being chainloadable, so I could have a primary "umbrella" bootloader for modern OSes eventually chainloading either the "selector" bootloader able to Boot the various old Windows OSes within the same partition, or a newer bootloader for modern OSes. It would be even Better if that puzzle work is not required, obviously, but is a possibility I was considering too
Shponglefan wrote on 2024-04-25, 15:24:
I'd recommend taking a look at BootIt! Bare Metal: https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-bare-metal/
I've been using it with my own multi-boot setup (I've got nine OS installs on one system). According to the documentation, it does support booting multiple OS from a single partition.
I haven't tried that feature myself as I've set up individual partitions for each OS. Though I do have additional partitions that are shared among various operating systems. For example, I have a couple partitions for DOS games and I make them visible to all my DOS and Windows partitions, since I can run DOS games from various OS.
I will give it an Eye and a try for sure, I was looking and considering PLOP, but my experience with bootloaders Is fairly limited, mostly to GRUB and having used PLOP on Floppy once or twice to enable Boot from USB in a PC that didn't support It.
That's also part of the reason why I started this project =)
