In theory, DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 98 can all co-exist on the same 2 GB FAT16 partition, but that of course would limit you to 2 GB, which isn't necessarily appealing.

Either way, MS-DOS 6.22 is restricted to using 2 GB FAT16 partitions. Will 2 GB be enough for everything you plan to do with DOS and Windows 3.1? If not, you will either have to create additional 2 GB FAT16 partitions, or just find an appropriate FAT32 driver. Alternatively, you could just switch to FreeDOS or DR-DOS/OpenDOS, which ought to be able to do everything MS-DOS 6.22 can do (including running Windows 3.1), or you could just use MS-DOS 7.10 for everything.

Both Windows 98 and MS-DOS 6.22 must be booted from primary partitions, and I think MS-DOS 6.22 requires its partition to be within the first 8 GB of the disk. You can actually do without a boot manager entirely if you just use a partitioning program that can toggle the "active" flag on each partition.

I've never used GAG before and would be slightly wary of something that does not seem to be very well-supported, but if its appearance appeals to you, then your opinion is what matters in the end.

I'm not sure I like constantly changing the active partition in order to avoid using a boot manager, though it may be something to consider if that really doesn't work out. I don't think the 2GB limitation will be a big problem for DOS or Windows 3.1, but I may use MS-DOS 7.10 and FAT32 for the Windows 3.1 partition and see how that works out for me.

If GAG doesn't work out for me then I'll be looking into other boot managers before writing off the concept entirely. Thanks for your input though.

With a machine that fast, i'd ditch the DOS/Win3.1 plans and go straight to Windows 95c. There's more gains than losses in that (a handy machine to run those pesky 95-00 w9x games is nice), besides.... what would you *really* lose? That machine's too fast to play most of the visual basic trash anyway. Prepare to face "runtime error" 😀

Also has anyone ever hacked together a Win3.1 install using the Win95/98 precopy setup files?

You can install the second OS on it's own hard drive and dual boot by changing boot sequence in bios. Im doing that on my W95c/PCDos6.3 retro box - no software boot manager.

BTW I second leileilol's suggestion about swapping dos for W95. In reality I hardly ever find myself actually booting to dos anymore [dosbox is just toooo gooood] but having W95 has made it soooo much easier to get those "pesky" early Win games fired up properly..

I was indeed about to ask if there was something in particular that Windows 3.1 was needed for that Windows 98SE couldn't be used for. Certainly, I don't see much point in going for any version of Windows 95 if a machine can run Windows 98SE (as I'm sure this one will do).

leileilol wrote:

That machine's too fast to play most of the visual basic trash anyway. Prepare to face "runtime error" 😀

Um, are you thinking about Turbo Pascal? I don't think any of the ancient Visual Basic stuff had any fundamental problems with overly fast machines.

Also has anyone ever hacked together a Win3.1 install using the Win95/98 precopy setup files?

I once saw a Windows 3.1 installation that was cut down to the point where it could fit on a floppy disk. Unfortunately, at that point it is missing so many vital subsystems that it is practically useless for running anything. Presumably the Win9x preinstallation environment, even if properly hacked, would suffer from the same problem.

tincup wrote:

You can install the second OS on it's own hard drive and dual boot by changing boot sequence in bios. Im doing that on my W95c/PCDos6.3 retro box - no software boot manager.

That's what I was going to suggest: keep each OS on its own hard drive, and basically choose your OS by choosing your boot volume.

Of course, it's a lot more convenient when your motherboard's modern enough to support a boot order override by hitting F12 or some other F-key instead of having to dig through the BIOS setup every time.

Well thank you all for your replies, they've certainly made for interesting reading. One thing that has struck me is the strong aversion to using a boot manager, but no-one has quite explained why they are taking such steps to avoid such a thing. To my mind, it strikes me as a simple and elegant solution to such a problem.

I am still of a mind to proceed with GAG for the moment for a variety of reasons. Amongst these is the issue of not being able to fit a second hard drive without sacrificing the internal ZIP drive, something that for now is a necessary item and bears the added bonus of filling a hole in the case (no blanking plate). Of course a second hard drive is of little use as the BIOS is designed in such a way that one must choose, floppy, zip, cdrom or C, vis-a-vis the primary master, which would mean more than going into the BIOS to change which hard drive to use. Of course it has to be said that to my mind, choosing a different drive to boot from seems like a clunky solution.

The suggestion to run Windows 95 instead of Windows 3.1 seems counter-productive to my mind. Whilst it is true that the machine is too fast for its intended purpose, as I mentioned in my original post, I will be using software utilities such as moslo and throttle to drastically reduce the speed of the system where appropriate. This means that the really old DOS programs that I plan on running will be able to run at the correct speed. Windows 98 should be able to do everything that Windows 95 can do better, whilst having a partition with Windows 3.1 will allow me to travel down nostalgia lane with hardware way beyond it's requirements. In addition, there are some 16bit applications that I want to run that have always had trouble with the 32bit code Windows 95 introduced. 95 was always notoriously unstable when required to run in too much of a mixed mode environment and my recent experiments have only served to highlight this issue.

I plan on starting this project to today so we'll see what happens. I appreciate all of your input and I'll update the thread with my progress.

I am using Plop Boot Manager on my p1 that has DOS and 98SE , both on separate partitions on the same disk and once you boot one the other is hidden. It's a great boot manager, grab it here: http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagers.html

I have tried other solutions in the past but none came even close to Plop... if you are like me that want to really have your partitions appear as the only on the system once booted - or getting tired to loose your MBR then look no further. 😊 The online documentation even explains how to make such a config 😀

I'll be looking into PLOP with great interest. I've held off installing GAG for now so that I can go through the documentation and try this out. Thank you very much indeed, the tip is much appreciated.

don't mention it, I've been on the same boat... I have tried several free (or not) bootmanagers with a test HDD, I even tried GAG... nothing really stick with me except PLOP, some managers even corrupted the MBR IIRC 🙁

coherentbaboon wrote:

One thing that has struck me is the strong aversion to using a boot manager, but no-one has quite explained why they are taking such steps to avoid such a thing.

As Mr. Keropi suggests, they wok fine until something goes wrong and your computer is rendered completely unbootable. (Of course, a corrupt MBR can be a relatively easy thing to recover from – provided you have the tools on hand.)

In addition, there are some 16bit applications that I want to run that have always had trouble with the 32bit code Windows 95 introduced.

Which ones, specifically? I am most curious.

PLOP sounds good, but as a boot manager it hides the unbooted OS. With a separate drive for each OS you can sill see the other partition if needed, which allows you to fiddle with all your dos system and game files from within a Win session, something of a conveneience.

While I've found reaching into the bios to set the boot drive becomes almost second nature, it is the weakness of the solution to be sure. Another weakness is that the price of those old 1-3gb dos friendly drives is going up. A few years ago there was always a pile of them laying around so dropping in a new one was no big deal - but the herd is thinning. I lost 2 WDs just in the last year. If you only have 1 period drive on hand a free software solution has appeal.

tincup wrote:

Another weakness is that the price of those old 1-3gb dos friendly drives is going up. A few years ago there was always a pile of them laying around so dropping in a new one was no big deal - but the herd is thinning. I lost 2 WDs just in the last year.

Wasn't there some discussion that compact-flash-to-IDE adapters were an acceptable solution?

The issue with the other boot drives being hidden is frankly a bonus to me rather than a serious issue. Once the system is set up then I will want the drives to be hidden from the other operating systems if only to satisfy my OCD. If I need to mess with files on the drive from Windows then I will boot off the CD into a Windows PE environment.

As for the software that I will be running under Windows 3.1, most of it would run under 95 just fine, but I have a few custom made manufacturing applications, accountancy packages and catalogues that were designed exclusively for Windows 3.1 and they are a devil to get working under anything other than Windows 3.x. A firm in Newcastle made them back in the 90's - I have a few DOS based apps from them as well from the 80's that I will also be running. I think they specialise in logisitcs software now, but a fellow who gave me a couple of Olivetti M21 luggables also gave me a pile of unique software with them as well.

As an aside, I never found Windows 95 to be especially stable. Windows 98 SE was pretty sorted and Windows 3.1 seemed to be pretty robust - or at least fixable as well. Running 16 bit applications always seemed to make 95 worse so I've developed a bit of a negative reaction to the OS and was always glad to get away from it.

As an addendum - not had chance to work on the computer yet, every time I try to do anything something - or someone else does something to stop me. May try again tomorrow before I go to work.

coherentbaboon wrote:

The issue with the other boot drives being hidden is frankly a bonus to me rather than a serious issue. Once the system is set up then I will want the drives to be hidden from the other operating systems if only to satisfy my OCD. If I need to mess with files on the drive from Windows then I will boot off the CD into a Windows PE environment.

For starters, that will get old really fast. More importantly, if the boot loader hides partitions – which, as I recall, is a matter of setting a flag in the partition table – then even if you boot off a CD, the partition that was hidden the last time you booted with the bootloader will still be hidden.

Incidentally, the way DOS and Win9x work mean that regardless of whether the other partition is hidden, whichever partition is booted will be identified as drive C after the computer is booted.

I have a few custom made manufacturing applications, accountancy packages and catalogues that were designed exclusively for Windows 3.1 and they are a devil to get working under anything other than Windows 3.x.

Fair enough, but why exactly do you want to run these? They seem more like the sort of thing you might look at once and then never poke at ever again.

Windows 3.1 seemed to be pretty robust - or at least fixable as well.

Windows 3.x was a trainwreck in my mind, and I would suspect that a 16-bit application capable of taking down Windows 95 ought to be just as capable of ruining Windows 3.x. But to each his own.

Windows 3.x was a trainwreck in my mind, and I would suspect that a 16-bit application capable of taking down Windows 95 ought to be just as capable of ruining Windows 3.x. But to each his own.

Windows 95 would get brought down because of its attempts to retain backwards compatibility. It was trying to introduce 32 bit capability whilst retaining 16 bit code support and with Windows 95 in particular - it was also trying to retain the old Windows 3.x way of working as well. Full stability needed the NT core, which the company succeeded in transitioning people to with Windows XP. So Windows 3.1 could be perfectly OK as long as you were somewhat careful, but I have found Windows 95 to go down at the slightest thing. Windows 98 SE has not presented me with the same problem.

I take your point about the partitions being hidden becoming an issue, we'll have to see how that goes as I use the system. To be fair, having to change the boot drive via BIOS or using manually selecting the active partition would get old a lot faster though, so I'm sure I'll be able to live with it. As for the applications that I'm running, I concede that I have little use for them on a daily basis and the same extends to Windows 3.1, they really are just there for me to play around with as the whim takes me, but then that's the whole point of the system. I have the resources so why not?

This machine is to be booted up as and when without me needing to do anything more than sit down at the desk and boot it up. I have other computers that I can drag out as and when I need them - a 486 that will be running Windows 3.1 and a Pentium 200 box that will have Windows 98SE (I still see no reason to have 95 over 98). However, the main legacy setup consists of two machines - a Phenom II box with 4GB RAM and Windows XP/Windows 7 and this K6-III box with DOS/Windows 3.1/Windows 98SE, both sharing a 22" Trinitron CRT monitor and decent speakers. The former will run the majority of my software through things like DOSBOX, emulators, virtual machines or simple software patches, the latter is there for when those fail. I hope this clears things up somewhat.

Jorpho wrote:

For starters, that will get old really fast. More importantly, if the boot loader hides partitions – which, as I recall, is a matter of setting a flag in the partition table – then even if you boot off a CD, the partition that was hidden the last time you booted with the bootloader will still
be hidden.

[...]

That's 50% correct because partition hiding is an option in PLOP , an option that you can change in the bootmanager config screen on-the-fly and as many times as you like.
And I can't see how partition hiding can get "old really fast" if one likes it this way...

btw with PLOP you get to boot from cd-rom in systems that don't support it from BIOS

coherentbaboon wrote:

having to change the boot drive via BIOS or using manually selecting the active partition would get old a lot faster though

The BIOS, perhaps, but some utilities, such as GDISK, let you toggle the active partition with a single, short DOS command.

coherentbaboon wrote:

I have the resources so why not?

Time and sanity are also finite resources. 😉

keropi wrote:

And I can't see how partition hiding can get "old really fast" if one likes it this way...

I meant booting off a CD-ROM every time one wants to mess with files in a particular way can get old really fast.