DOS on two drives with V/AT 2.4

[David Beckemeyer]

Wow DOS is a pain!

I have to be able to use DOS on my 286 AT system sometimes.  For a long
time I didn't have any DOS partitions on my system.  According to the
manuals it all looks pretty easy, but no.

I have two drives.   I'd like to be able to boot DOS from
the second unit only, but this doesn't seem to work.  Microport
fdisk puts the DOS partition there, but PC-DOS fdisk doesn't
want to use it.  Ok so much for trying to use the secod disk.

Next I tried putting DOS ont eh first disk but on a partition other
than the first, and again Microport fdisk did it, but DOS fdisk
couldn't figure out the valid range of sectors to use.  It
kept telling me that the disk had to start at X but must end before
X - 1 (where X is the end of the uport partition)!

So I finally made the DOS partition the first one on drive 0.
You still have to be careful because DOS fdisk can wipe out the
microport stuff, even if it doesn't seem like it should.  The
order of doing things is very critical.

But what I really want to do is still have DOS recognize the
second disk.  I guess with the partition on the first disk unit
being C: and the one on the second unit being D:, unless it's
possible to make DOS boot off the second unit (probably not though
huh?).  What is the correct procedure to set up a small partition
on the first unit and another on the second unit?   I mostly need
to know what the DOS/microport interaction and order of operations
needs to be so I don't have to do it ten times like I already have.

Thanks for any help with this anyone can offer.  The version of
DOS is IBM PC-DOS Version 3.2.
-- 
David Beckemeyer (david at bdt.UUCP)	| "I'll forgive you Dad...  If you have
Beckemeyer Development Tools		| a breath mint."
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