[comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc] dos 5.0 BIGDOS FAT?

hartnegg@sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.de (Klaus Hartnegg) (06/20/91)

jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org (Joe Morris) writes:
[...]
>the DOS5 installation
>rebuilt the FAT to BIGDOS format, which is unknown to DOS 3.3 and prevents
>it from recognizing the DOS partition.

Will Dos 5 really do this with ALL partitions regardless of wether
there have more than 32 MB or not?

If so a lot of software would have to be changed because until now
one can assume that a partition is of the old type as long as its size 
is less than 32MB.

Or will Dos5 automatically convert the old style int 25 and int 26 
calls to the "big" ones ?
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jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org (Joe Morris) (06/21/91)

hartnegg@sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.de (Klaus Hartnegg) writes:

>jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org (Joe Morris) writes:
>[...]
>>the DOS5 installation
>>rebuilt the FAT to BIGDOS format, which is unknown to DOS 3.3 and prevents
>>it from recognizing the DOS partition.

>Will Dos 5 really do this with ALL partitions regardless of wether
>there have more than 32 MB or not?

No.  The case I cited was for a PS/2-70-121 (120 MB fixed disk); I'm typing
this on a NEC PowerMate which has two physical fixed disks of 40 MB each.
Installing MS-DOS 5 on this unit did *not* reconfigure the FAT.  It's 
still in DOS-16 format.  I haven't tried DOS5 on any otherm machine with 
120 MB of fixed disk or larger, so I have a sample population of one.

BTW: both the PS/2-70 and the NEC were partitioned using the standard 
FDISK program.

I haven't gotten around to calling uSoft to see just why this happened.

Joe Morris