I'm going to be partitioning a 540 meg hard disk...I plan to have one partition formatted to FAT16, and with DOS 6.22 and Win31, and the other partition formatted to either FAT32 or FAT16, and with DOS 7 and Windows 95.

I'm not entirely sure how to make the second partition to a FAT32, would I create an Extended DOS partition and then a Logical DOS with FDISK from DOS 6.22, then use FORMAT from DOS 7 to format it? Please tell me how someone....

Also, should I use FAT16 or FAT32 for it? If
I use FAT16 then I can access the partition from DOS 6.22. FAT32 I won't be able to access with DOS 6.22, but is more efficient and suited to Windows 95 than FAT16

Then, I'll need a boot menu to select the partition, does anyone know of any good ones that are freeware? I need one that installs onto the MBR or boot sector of a hard disk and lets you select the partition at bootup.

I've seen this around many times; it's a knid of trick that will allow you to have 2 primary partitions (one FAT32, the other FAT16) on the same disk. Windows needs to boot off a primary partition, so you'll need to put it there.
You should note that FAT32 is, by default, disabled in fdisk for partitions smaller that 512MB - so you could keep dos on a 20-something MB partition (that should be enough for 6.2), but not have any room for an extended partition. This may be critical when trying to share files between OSes, since Win95 can use the FAT16 drive, but MSDOS cannot "see" the FAT32... this forms the basis behind the "trick" I was talking about:
First run fdisk 7.0 that came with Windows 95B and answer 'Y' to the startup screen which prompts if you want to enable large disk support (by this they mean 32-bit FAT support). Then follow the procedure to create a primary partition larger than 512MB. Reboot and re-format the new drive.
Now re-start your computer with a DOS 6 boot disk, use fdisk 6.2 to create a primary DOS partition. It works because DOS 6.2 pre-dated FAT32 and doesn't recognize it as a valid DOS- partition type. You can then reboot with the same DOS 6.2 boot disk and format C:
You now have two primary partitions - one fat32, the other fat16. There is nothing wrong with doing this, it's just that dos fdisk won't create more than one primary dos drive. Starting with DOS 5.0, the MS-DOS kernel has support for handling multiple FAT volumes on primary partitions. Guess they forgot to update Fdisk in all the excitement :-)
Just remember to make the Win95 partition and enabling large disk support first, before making the DOS one.
Some other things you should consider: do you need FAT32? It makes more efficient use of disk space, but Microsoft warns that some compatibility problems with (much) older dos software may arise (I haven't had any, though). Also, I hear its a bit slower, but I bet no one can really tell the difference.

There are several suitable boot managers. IBM's is very good but it comes with Partition Magic 3.0 (a commercial software),, also has the drawback of wasting one of your four primary partitions. PowerQuest BootMagic is a graphical one that comes with Windows-based Partition Magic versions. It has the advantage of letting you alternate between four PC operating systems and apparently supports quite a few.
Then there is System Commander: This is a very versatile program that lets you create, delete, modify and customize/hide partitions and select the booting of virtually any os made for the pc. The drawback: its commercial software.
You might also find something at one of those so-called freeware sites if you look around.

I came across stuff about FAT32 being larger than 512 megs about 10 minutes after I posted the first message... I guess FAT16 will be what I need, anyway, I wanted more like 180 megs for DOS 6.22 and 360 megs for Windows 95, so I have no choice really.
(Does Windows 95 support installation to any partition or drive, I'm wondering? If it doesn't, I'll need some utility which can hide or swap drives.)

The program FIPS would work too, wouldn't it?
It creates 2 primary partitions, if I recall, which is what I need in order to boot from any partition.

I'm looking for a _FREE_ boot manager here... I've tried Wolfpack & Icepack but my video card doesn't have VESA onboard, like required... I looked at Multi Boot Manager and it had to use Cylinder #0 or something to store things because it wouldn't fit in the MBR...and I just got one called Legend OS, not sure if it's the kind I'm looking for (installs in MBR). I think there was one called MasterBooter or something like that, anyone know anything about that or where I can get it?

Thanks, Dwarf and DMC.....

Win95 installs to the fist dos partition, regardless of how you want it to see your configuration. You might need to temporarily hide the "non-Windows" partition before the installation, using a program that will let you change a partitions' system id. The linux version of fdisk lets you do this - just change the id number to anything but dos, then change it back after you got Win95 on your disk. You may have to repeat the process in order to get DOS installed too.
I would recommend making partition one first, installing Windows, and only then creating another after hiding the first.
LILO is an other OS loader that you might find useful, works in the MBR, but that comes with Linux...

2 freebies:

1. xosl (that's l as in Operating System Launcher)

2. ranish partition manager.

Thanks....

Can you email me Linux Fdisk and LILO, or give a URL where I can download them?

And do you know any programs(freeware preferably) designed mainly to hide partitions temporarily? What I want to do is have the DOS 6.22 partition temporarily hidden while I'm running and installing Win95, partially because the DOS 6.22 partition will be first and Win95 second, and Win95 probably only boots and installs off of C: like you said, and also because I don't want it messing around with a DOS 6.22 partition. I don't know if there's any way of having this done at bootup when the Win95 partition is selected and restored when DOS 6.22 is selected, a reboot is probably necessary... LILO can't do that, can it? I've tried Legend OS Boot Manager, it's experimental and development was stopped. It works fine, just doesn't have many features. Guess you can't cram too much code into the MBR when it's 512 bytes long.

Those utilities I mentioned are actually part of the Linux operating system, so you'd need that too. You might want to try RedHat Linux 4.0 with DOS. Its hard to say without knowing exactly what you want to do.
OR, if you still want Win95, make two equally-sized primary partitions, ~20MB each, and the rest of your drive contains an extended partition. Make a logical drive ~200MB in the extended partition, then install win95 but be sure to specify that you want to install to D:\WINDOWS (which will be the big logcal drive). After you get Windows up and running, hide the Win95 partition and run DOS setup, which will install to the unhidden partition. You can then create more logical drives when and if necessary. Unhide Win95 and use a boot manager to boot the version of DOS you want. I can't make a recommendation here, since I tend to use fdisk to toggle the active partition on my disk.

I should have mentioned this above, but Windows 95 is really DOS 7 with a nice Graphical User Interface as part of the package. Even though installing to D:\WINDOWS will put the Windows files in that directory Win95 still needs a primary DOS drive in which to put its most critical file needed for starting the system: the traditional files associated with MS-DOS.
You might even want (I think this is better) to try a 10mb primary drive for keeping those basic files. DOS 6 is bigger than DOS 7, though, and needs at least 15MB of space.

Really, I want reiterate what someone else said. Please try ranish partition manager or XOSL. Ranish can be found at www.ranish.com and xosl at www.xosl.org .

They are both very good programs.

-Michael

Yep, I vote for Ranish or XOSL as well. I currently use (and really enjoy) Ranish but was pondering switching up to XOSL for the neater looking boot menu. :) Either way, Ranish is a great program and XOSL looks at least as great.

Right now I use Legend OS Boot Manager, it's got everything I need and it's freeware, and I've had no trouble with it. I'll try out those 2 programs though....they better be freeware....

I've got it pretty much figured out how I'll have stuff configured. The boot manager I use makes the drive booted from automatically active and assigned to C:, and the other one D:, so that works out with Windows 95 and DOS 6.22. I don't really have a need for hiding partitions, swapping them works fine. FIPS seems to work for 2 primary partitions. I haven't got the hard drive yet I'll be using, one of my relatives will be giving me it next time I see him... But I've tried what I plan to do using my current hard drive with some partitions made with FIPS and everything worked perfectly.

What features do these 2 boot menus have, I'm wondering?

Ranish is a partition/boot menu program. So with it you can create partitions of any format known to man as well as have a boot menu to access them - that goes beyond the four partition limit. It is full of features and relatively easy to use. (I use the older version for partition creation as I can input size versus CHS for partition creation and then the newer version for the boot menu.) XOSL may do partitioning as well, I don't know. I *do* know that it has a much nicer boot menu interface with mouse support - instead of the all-text Ranish one. Both are freeware.

If they're graphical, won't they need VESA onboard or something? Icepack and Wolfpack, both graphical, needed VESA onboard, which I don't have. Hmmmmmmmmm....... Oh well... as long as I have one that works.

Only one of them is graphical...

I looked at XOSL, but don't think my video card supports it - no VESA onboard - and I also don't particularly like repartitioning and making a partition just for a boot menu. Thanks anyway, I'll look into Ranish...

http://www.users.intercom.com/~ranish/part/