G200 NT/98 Dual Boot preparation

[MartinS]

Sorry to drag everyone back to legacy hardware for a minute - G200 - remember them
Other than downloading the latest PD drivers are there any tips/hints in preparation for me installing NT4 w/service pack 5 on a NT/98 dual boot system.

I know that OpenGL isn't available under NT which is a tad unfortunate as I'm running 3DS Max

[Alegria]

Unless you have two SCSI/IDE HDDs and a host adaptor allowing you to select the boot ID or drive and you have only one harddrive
I recommend first creating a small FAT12/16 DOS primary partition. This partition must be activated and formatted afterwards. Don't try FAT32 as NT can't place its boot files on that drive. Second step would be to install WIN9X in an extended partition with at least one logical drive (e.g drive letter D). After this installation boot your NT-Setup and when it comes to partitioning add another partition through NT. Unless you have the ATAPI.SYS from SP3/4 on your boot disks NT won't recognize drives larger than 8033 GB, so be sure that you dont create the WIN98 partition beyond this limit. Leave enough space for NT below 8GB At this time you can create partitions up to 4GB (4096 maximum) in size because NT uses FAT for the initial format even though you might have selected NTFS for the partition. Go ahead and install NT. By now there should be three entries in your BOOT.INI on drive C: indicating Windows NT, Windows NT (VGA) and at last Windows. Complete the installation and there you go.

[Le Bodge]

With regards to the G200 and dual-booting, you shouldn't have any problems. I did exactly the same thing a while back.

Le B.

[MoleDK]

Me too. I just used loadlin to boot Linux instead of NT. Works nicely if you reserve those 500 megs or so

It's also handy to store email and url-favorites in case you restore with image type programs like Ghost or PQDI.



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Cya,
J.

"Unix can be a cynical Operating System for a person whos mind is limited to a Windows user interface"

System specs:
ASUS P2B-LS, P2-266, 128MB RAM, Matrox Millenium G200 (PD5.25), Nothing O/C.
Running Windows 98SE & Redhat Linux 6.1

[MartinS]

Thanks for the advice. esp re: the 8 gig disk size problems. I have downloaded the driver and will copy the CD to the hard drive and copy the driver into the required folder before installing.
Ta

[Jorden]

Is it possible to put WinNT 4.0 Server behind an existing FAT32 Win98 partition, on it's own FAT16 partition?

If so, how?

Jorden.

[arbymo]

MartinS : OGL is available under NT since
driver ver. 4.17 i think.
now there are 3 newer versions, 4.22,4.31 and
4.21 ( certified ).

i'm running ver. 4.22 and OGL works ( at least for Q2 ) dunno about 3DMAX though ..


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Giga Byte 6BXE, celeron300A@450, 128 Ram
G200 8M SD, driver 5.25, Bios 1.6

[Alegria]

Using alternative partition creating software it should be possible to create a second primary partition on a system containing already one primary FAT32 partition and making it the active partition before bootup using an alternative boot manager but there is still the problem of the starting cylinder of the partition behind cylinder 1024 if your first primary partition exceeds this one. NT won't boot because it is limited to having the boot code within the first 1024 cylinders. The solution would be to install NT in front of the FAT32 partition. Second issue is that if you already have one primary FAT32 partition NT can't place its boot files on it. It can only use an NTFS or FAT16 partition to do that and it certainly will try to place its files NTLDR, BOOT.INI and NTDETECT on the first partition. Otherwise your installation will fail. It is much easier to use the method I described in my first post.
1st step: create small FAT16 part.
2nd step: create FAT32 part and leave enough space within the first 8GB for NT. Install WIN9X.
3rd step: Install NT.
Hint to HPT366 UDMA Users, Adaptec U2W SCSI
Start Installation from the three NT Boot-Disks and Skip automatic hardware detection.
Choose Add Hardware to install your controller.
If you already experienced crashes booting from CD try pressing F6 upon the message "Setup is examining your hardware"
This should skip autodetection and enables you to install your drivers from the manufacturers disk (floppy!).
Any questions?