Just the easy ones:

Brosopholes wrote on 2024-07-22, 16:43:

• Do I align the SSD before OS installs?

Before, as that's a choice you (or your partitioning software) makes when creating partitions 😀

(You may or may not be able to move them afterwards: finding something that does that for FAT16/32 isn't hard - like gParted Live - but easier and faster to do it right the first time!)

Brosopholes wrote on 2024-07-22, 16:43:

• Do I need to apply any patches or fixes for older OS to install on large SSD

Unless you want period-accurately-sized partitions yes, as classic DOS is limited by Int13 CHS access (and FAT16) while 98 is by LBA28;
I guess you could use PC-DOS 7.1.01 or FreeDOS (the ones with Int13X = LBA and FAT32 support), while 98 had a patch made by the famous Rudolph Loew

Brosopholes wrote on 2024-07-22, 16:43:

• Is 25% unused SSD enough to combat the garbage collection issue that wears out SSD?
• Does the P220 have onboard trim? Do I have to worry about throughput in win98? Reliability issues from trim onboard vs no trim?

No such thing as "onboard" trim (at least on most every commercially available SSD) - that's how an OS tells the drive which sectors are not in use anymore, so the only real alternative would be the drive's firmware being aware of whatever partitioning scheme and filesystems you're using on it (which has actually been done for MBR/1 partition/FAT32, though for rather different reasons: Wi-Fi+SD cards like Eye-Fi and FlashAir, and some weird flash drive with an E-Ink capacity display)

What's real (and probably extremely common on any SSD made in the last 10 years, as opposed to a 2004 flash drive or memory card by the lowest bidder) is that drives can still do wear leveling (redistributing writes around the physical sectors) even without TRIM (which doesn't have to be done in real time when deleting something: you could simply boot Linux and run `fstrim' every now and then), and overprovisioning (reserving some capacity, ie trimming some space - as it is out of the box - and not using it anymore, for example by not filling it with partitions) does leave more freedom to the wear leveling logic (25% would be quite a lot, but would also leave you a lot of peace of mind if you "forget to trim" in quite a while - which BTW isn't an issue of time but of sectors allocated and freed)

Is it actually 128 GB? While certainly possible (= not everyone does the following), some consumer brands/models are already overprovisioned at the firmware level, which is how you can buy 120/240/480GB SSDs 😀

Brosopholes wrote on 2024-07-22, 16:43:

• Any MBR issues with this setup if only one OS drive is on at a time?

Dedicating a physical disk for every OS is by far the most reliable way to avoid conflicts 😀

However you must be aware that in a BIOS system, only Int13 hard drive 80 (and floppy drive 0 - the first of either group) are bootable, so if your firmware is new enough to support booting from "D:" or even have a list-based boot sequence, that will renumber the drives to make the selected one 80, and in all these DOS-derived OSes you will definitely notice that! (drive letters changing, but also the installers for said OSes and fdisk /mbr really insisting on putting the bootloader somewhere on drive 80)

Brosopholes wrote on 2024-07-22, 16:43:

Any other software to look at to format/align/trim the drives?

When I did my multi-OS Pentium 4 (see signature link), I used BootIt BareMetal. It functions as both a partition manager and boot manager. It can do things like partition alignment, moving and resizing partitions, etc. I was able to install eight operating systems onto only two SSD drives.

In your set up, it looks like you're planning to use individual SSD drives for each OS? For DOS and Windows 3.11, this seems like a waste. For example, DOS 6.22 has an 8 GB total drive limit (2 GB FAT16 partitions). Since Windows 3.11 runs on DOS, I imagine it would have the same limitation.

The alternative as mention above would be to use a different version of DOS allowing for larger drive sizes.

If you wanted to stay with period-correct OS and drive limits, you could fit DOS, Win 3.11 and Win 98 all on one SSD, each with its own partition.

Similarly, Windows 98 has a 128 GB drive size limit. I'm not sure what the exact intent of the 512GB drive is, but you'd need to install a patch to allow Windows 98 to properly work with it.

Dedicating a physical disk for every OS is by far the most reliable way to avoid conflicts 😀

However you must be aware that in a BIOS system, only Int13 hard drive 80 (and floppy drive 0 - the first of either group) are bootable, so if your firmware is new enough to support booting from "D:" or even have a list-based boot sequence, that will renumber the drives to make the selected one 80, and in all these DOS-derived OSes you will definitely notice that! (drive letters changing, but also the installers for said OSes and fdisk /mbr really insisting on putting the bootloader somewhere on drive 80)

I cannot install the SSDs until the SATA Controller arrives. In the mean time, I do have two hard disks in the machine.

Here are the boot options on the BIOS:

Here is the Hard Drive menu expanded:

The way I read this, if no CD or removable media is inserted, it will go down the list of devices in the Hard Drive section. When the SSDs are in, and are physically powered off via IcyDock, that list may change on each boot. However, if only the OS have an MBR, and the 512gb does not, I think I will be okay? The (PM) and (PS) at the end of the Hard Drive list may also give clues, but I do not know what they mean.

Thanks for all the inputs 😀

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-07-22, 20:19:

When I did my multi-OS Pentium 4 (see signature link), I used BootIt BareMetal. It functions as both a partition manager and bo […]
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Brosopholes wrote on 2024-07-22, 16:43:

Any other software to look at to format/align/trim the drives?

When I did my multi-OS Pentium 4 (see signature link), I used BootIt BareMetal. It functions as both a partition manager and boot manager. It can do things like partition alignment, moving and resizing partitions, etc. I was able to install eight operating systems onto only two SSD drives.

In your set up, it looks like you're planning to use individual SSD drives for each OS? For DOS and Windows 3.11, this seems like a waste. For example, DOS 6.22 has an 8 GB total drive limit (2 GB FAT16 partitions). Since Windows 3.11 runs on DOS, I imagine it would have the same limitation.

The alternative as mention above would be to use a different version of DOS allowing for larger drive sizes.

If you wanted to stay with period-correct OS and drive limits, you could fit DOS, Win 3.11 and Win 98 all on one SSD, each with its own partition.

Similarly, Windows 98 has a 128 GB drive size limit. I'm not sure what the exact intent of the 512GB drive is, but you'd need to install a patch to allow Windows 98 to properly work with it.

I am going to look into that software now! That sounds like a great option.

For reliability, I want to split the OS on independent drives. If I do something stupid, replacing the image will be easy and I do not impact the other OS. The drives were ~ $12 USD, worth the peace of mind and probably the cheapest part of the build anyways 😀

The 512 gb is just hosting media files, backups, and installer files. I would like to be able to access the drive from each OS. With the limits in 3.1 and DOS, it sounds like I would need to partition it 2 times, one 8gb and the rest for win98. Does anyone know a workaround to see the full 512gb in DOS? I'd like to avoid the opensource alternatives.

Brosopholes wrote on 2024-07-22, 20:45:

The 512 gb is just hosting media files, backups, and installer files. I would like to be able to access the drive from each OS. With the limits in 3.1 and DOS, it sounds like I would need to partition it 2 times, one 8gb and the rest for win98.

Just to be clear, the 8GB limit in DOS is total drive size, not partition size. The partition size limit is 2 GB. This is the maximum partition size using FAT16.

I don't know if it's possible to extend this under DOS 6.22 (since you'd no longer be using FAT16).

Since you mention reliability is a concern and don't want to use alternative DOS versions, I'd stick with the conventional limits.

Brosopholes wrote on 2024-07-22, 20:39:

The (PM) and (PS) at the end of the Hard Drive list may also give clues, but I do not know what they mean.

Primary Master and Primary Slave 😀

SATA drives would typically be S1, S2, etc - but since your computer doesn't support SATA, the controller will (hopefully) have an option ROM bringing some degree of boot support for them (there are various possible approaches that may or may not integrate in the boot menu, in the latter case you'd use the "bootable addin card" option)

Brosopholes wrote on 2024-07-22, 20:39:

In the mean time, I do have two hard disks in the machine.
[photos]

With that setup, the Quantum will be drive 80 and the Seagate drive 81 (floppies start at 0 and CDs do not count), unless:
- you have a single-use boot menu (the "press F12" type) and select the Seagate, in which case that will become drive 80 and the other will most likely become 81
- the Quantum is considered non-bootable (because the first sector doesn't end in 55 AA bytes, and possibly if the operating system returns with INT19 which can commonly happen with the usual errors from Microsoft MBRs and VBRs), then the Seagate will be tried as above
- you're booting from a CD using a certain variant of the El Torito standard (there's native mode, virtual HDD drive 80 mode, various virtual FDD drive 0 modes)

Brosopholes wrote on 2024-07-22, 20:39:

However, if only the OS have an MBR, and the 512gb does not, I think I will be okay?

I think it would be rather hard to have an usable HDD in DOS/Win16 without a MBR (which would mean using the whole disk as a partition, "superfloppy" style), on top of the mentioned capacity problems 😀 - even though ironically it could still easily be bootable, since the FAT12/16/32 VBR also ends in 55 AA and so would be accepted by the BIOS!