Adding Win98 = Reformatting?

[edoc]

Despite all efforts to avoid it older and incompetent-programmer written children's
learning CD's require Win98.

I tried WINE and many of them fail.

Puppy 2.12 is loaded with Ext2.

I presume that I need to boot from the Puppy 2.12 iso CD in RAM,
use PDisk to clear the HDD,
reformat as FAT32,
then load Win98SE,
then do a "frugal" install of Puppy 2.12,
then set up GRUB to provide a choice at boot?

[Flash]

That sounds about right. It's been my experience that Windows must be installed first, then Linux added. I would first partition the hard drive so that the first partition is FAT32, sizing it according to how I planned to use Windows. Then I'd partition and format the rest of the hard drive for Puppy. (Not forgetting a swap partition.) The Windows installation CD will install to the FAT32 partition and write the Windows version of the boot sector to the first sector of the hard drive. GRUB overwrites the Windows boot sector when it is installed. I think most Linux distributions have a GRUB installation program which will automatically add Windows to the GRUB boot menu if it sees Windows on the hard drive. I'm not sure about Puppy, though; I've never installed Puppy to a hard drive.

[rcrsn51]

Here's a procedure that has worked well for me:

When you reformat the drive, split off a 2 GB extended partition that holds a FAT32 logical volume. This will hold the Puppy files of your frugal install. You do not need to make a swap partition - Puppy will automatically create a swap file for you. Remember to flag the main partition bootable.

Install Windows

Download the GRUB4DOS package and extract the file GRUB.EXE. Store it at the root of Drive C:

Create the following AUTOEXEC.BAT file


@echo off

cls

choice /N /C:WP /T:P,10 "Press W-Windows or P-Puppy Linux: "

if errorlevel 2 grub



Create the following MENU.LST file, also in C:\



rootnoverify (hd0,4)

kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=idehd

initrd /initrd.gz


Copy the Puppy files from the CD to Drive D:
vmlinuz, initrd.gz, pup_212.sfs and zdrv_212.sfs

Reboot

[Lobster]

I've never installed Puppy to a hard drive.

I used to be obsessed with installing to Puppy to HD
- after all that is what you do right?

Wrong.
You do it if you have to. Or as a geek exercise. I am sure it is easier these days. The quickest I ever did it was 15 mins - normally it took a couple of hours to format and figure out etc
Have not done it in over a year.

Otherwise you put 98
XP
Vista
Ubuntu
Red Hat on your HD

. . . and boot from CD (take the CD out to boot from HD or if needing to use CD) I just leave Puppy in most of the time . . .

your settings are saved on HD

I never bother installing Puppy to a hard drive these days.

I do however copy pup_213.sfs to the HD as this speeds up booting from CD and when booting I hit "Enter" during the boot sequence (sometimes) to knock of the 5 sec options delay

Flash is booting from USB key drive?

Puppy is different . . .

[edoc]

Comments and questions inserted ...

Here's a procedure that has worked well for me:

When you reformat the drive, split off a 2 GB extended partition that holds a FAT32 logical volume. This will hold the Puppy files of your frugal install. You do not need to make a swap partition - Puppy will automatically create a swap file for you. Remember to flag the main partition bootable.

I used Pdisk from the Puppy 2.12 to fdisk, rebooted from a Win98se floppy and ran
fdisk again to tweak and format.

Would it matter if I did the "split off a 2 GB extended partition" later using Pdisk or GParted from the Puppy 2.12 (or the about to be released 2.13) iso cd?

Install Windows

Am doing this right now.

Download the GRUB4DOS package and extract the file GRUB.EXE. Store it at the root of Drive C:
Create the following AUTOEXEC.BAT file
@echo off
cls
choice /N /C:WP /T:P,10 "Press W-Windows or P-Puppy Linux: "
if errorlevel 2 grub
Create the following MENU.LST file, also in C:\
rootnoverify (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=idehd
initrd /initrd.gz

Is this different than the GRUB setup built into Puppy?

Cosmetically it looks like it would present a cleaner menu to the user.

Copy the Puppy files from the CD to Drive D:
vmlinuz, initrd.gz, pup_212.sfs and zdrv_212.sfs
Reboot

[rcrsn51]

You can make the separate partition whenever you want, but I would suggest that you do a Windows scandisk and defrag first to ensure that you can safely shrink the Win98 partition. It's easier to create another partition now when you are formatting the drive from scratch.

Of course, you don't need to put Puppy in its own partition if you are doing a frugal install. The files can just as easily go into the root of C:. I prefer putting Puppy in D: because I backup my Windows partition to an external USB drive. It's a waste of time to also backup the large Puppy files. I handle my Puppy backup separately by making a zipped copy of pup_save.3fs

As Flash said above, the danger in using a conventional Grub install is that it may overwrite Windows boot code . Like it or not, Windows wants to be top dog in your computer and you may prefer to let it be the alpha male.

[PaulBx1]

I use Puppy the same way Lobster does. It's very easy with upgrades too, and sometimes you need that because upgrades don't always work (e.g., 213 and 212 do not allow me to get email due to a pop bug in my ISP server, so I mostly run 211 for the moment). I have Win98 on the hard drive for various old programs; I just open the CD drawer when I want to boot it. The only thing I'm not crazy about is the long Win boot times whenever I have to use it.

I tried frugal install for a while but it was fussy doing upgrades and such. This is much easier.

[Rickrandom]

This helped me

http://www.icpug.org.uk/national/linnwi ... 4steps.htm