Help Install 2nd Hdd for Slackware?

[nightsky]

Soyo6BA+IV, 4 ide channels, ide1,2 udma33 cable: ide2,3 udma66 capable. Windows98SE
ide3: 15gb ATA66 Maxtor
ide2: plextor cdrw 8\4\32A
ide1: asus 52x cdrom
ISA Creative Modem Blaster FlashII 56 modem
PCI Yamaha sound card
RIVA Nvida Tnt2 (64) video crd

Want to install 2nd HDD - EDIE 5GB Maxtor for Slackware. Had dualboot using loadlin and wound up trashing my entire drive behind failed attempts at upgrading to slackware8.1b2. Loadlin
was fine but LINUX is a major learning experiment and I need win98 to remain functional at all times.

Should I setup C:\ drive for dualboot and install second hdd as slave making it D:\ drive? What mode is EIDE? Will it slow down the ATA66 hdd? Thanks

[OOPS!]

Hi,

I would install the 5gig as a slave and then load Slack on it. Then use Lilo or Grub do the boot loading (either are better and easier than loadlin). With Slack on the second drive, any mistakes, (i.e. learning you do) won't affect your Win drive. And 5gigs is plenty for Slack to live on.

The EIDE is much slower than ata66. So you will notice it on Slack. As a slave, it shouldn't slow the master drive. I'm not sure though.

EIDE is the second spec after IDE. IDE was about 10megs/sec, EIDE 15megs/sec, ATA33, ATA66, then last but not least ATA100.

Hope this helps,

OOPS!

[MaXimum SMOKE]

I would disregard the idea of using loadlin. If you have a second drive available for just the linux, I would format it into linux partitions, and install Lilo, or grub on the m.b.r., of the first physical hard drive, and let it select your boot. I am at a disadvantage, when it comes to slackware, since the last time I tried it was a long time ago, when redhat was at version 5.2 I wouldn't expect a performance decrease, since windows, wouldn't even be aware of the linux drive. I generally haven't heard of any other performance issues of intermixing two ide hdds on 1 ide cable, as long as they were configured on a standard high speed caple and the jumpers were set correctly. Using loadlin, however ..... I personally, could never see the use of loading another os, just to bootstrap a different one. If slackware kept up, and I would imagine they did (they appeared to appeal to the hobbyist more than the general user), You'll have the new ext3 journaled file system, and a lot of other goodies. Putting lilo, or grub on the mbr of the first hard drive, usually works o.k. There are exceptions, like if your first hard drive has a compatability software running in the mbr, say to make the bios interpret a drive, that it could not, by itself, or similar issues, you can have big problems, like losing all the data on the drive. Five gigs, should do you well as a linux drive. Not pre-booting win, or dos, before linux, should improve your overall experience. I can't give you Slackware specifics, however, as it has been too long a time since I tried one of their distros. As always, backup your data before messing with the MBR of your drive. ;)

[nightsky]

I have a High Point Bios setup thats kind of seperate from American flash bios or something. Don't feel confident with LILO the formums are full of all kinds of problem scenerios. I set the 5gb drive to slave on ide0 by itself b/c it wldn't boot either as slave or master on the ata66 ide. For now I don't care much about speed.
1) What is an EMS driver that supports VCPI?
2) And what is buffer memory (lowmem+extended)?
3)How do I know that my CPU is Not Virtual-8086?
4)Virtual-86 mode?
What are these lines referring to and how do I check there status in Win98SE environment? Thank you

[MaXimum SMOKE]

Are you saying you are running a separate ide controller board, (Not the motherboard ide) to get your UDMA 66? Extended, Expanded, low 640K mem are all dos terms, related to how Dos manages memory. Linux mem stats can be viewed, by looking at a process manager, or checking the information section, of KDEs control panel applet. As far as cpu, Basic kernels require at least a 386 to run them. There has been some experimentation with '286 special kernels, but why, I don't know. Some distributions require at least a '586 or better processor to install, even in runlevel three, text mode.

[nightsky]

The controllers are onboard part of mobo... but there is a seperate HPT bios for changing drive modes..
ide1&2 udma33
ide3&4 udma66
I know the terms are dos terms... just don't know what they are referring too. Secondly, I don't have linux setup to check... I am in win98... trying to setup slackware on a spare eide 5gb drv by itself w/o usling lilo

[MaXimum SMOKE]

I am at a loss why the 5 gig drive (By Itself) can't be made bootable on this ide. I thought perhaps you were using a separate controller, made for a specific drive, but this isn't the case. Generally when you set up a single drive, the first partition formed is primary and made bootable. Bootable is a 'toggle' You have to set it bootable with fdisk. Under my version of linux fdisk, the command is listed as a to toggle the bootable flag. Once it is bootable, then you need a bootstrap loader in it's boot record to transfer the process to the kernal residing in /boot. The good 'ol standby in the linux world is lilo. It is convenient to make a small like say 25 meg linux native part, and mount it as /boot The install will load the kernal there. It would be primary and the first physical partition, toggled bootable. If this were your only hard disk and was strictly linux, then lilo probably would boot it ok, after the rest of the partitions were made and the os installed. Those are kind of the conditions to build a single os type install. Did this drive work as a windows "C" drive alone, on this machine? I can't help you as much as the people in the windows forums on the dos specific memory terms. Doing a straight boot into linux I never had to worry about dos memory management. Once the linux kernal has control, I'm not really sure that what "was in memory", should mess you up, but I never used loadlin. Slackware makes a good stable distribution, but in my personal opinion I would not recommend it to a person new to linux. Especially if there isn't a linux user's group near to you. Mandrake seems to be the most friendly to win users. Redhat however seems to be one of the best documented distros. Books on Redhat are plentiful.

[nightsky]

Thanks MaximumSmoke, Not to worry. Seems I am not being clear ;)