IBM-PC install on E: drive?

[John D. Pritchard jdp@cs.columbia.edu]

hi will,

> : btw, if your last fdisk was with OS/2's fdisk, you'll need to redo your
> : disk with a DOS fdisk.
> 
> Well, no.  It's a long time since I used MSDOS' fdisk, and Plan 9 loaded
> fine onto an OS/2 formatted/partitioned drive.

that was my experience with the ftp://plan9.att.com/plan9/pcdist
distribution.

>  Will the four-disk set
> really load into an MSDOS partition?  The CDROM won't.

yes and no, the floppy set puts the contents of the first disk into a DOS
logical partition, ie, C:\PLAN9, then will do the File System Installation
into a non-FAT-referenced partition at the high end of your disk, or into
another disk.

this lets you boot into DOS, and then run PLAN9\B (C:\PLAN9\B.COM (which
gives me a whole new outlook on DOS)) to boot the plan9 OS (as per the
configuration established in C:\PLAN9\PLAN9.INI) from the plan9 partition.

this is really a nice setup for learning the system and playing with
configuration.  you can use an editor in DOS to evolve plan9.ini which is
much faster (for cycling through some variables) than going through the
only alternative (in cases like a nonworking vga configuration) to the
lethargic boot from a floppy (the first plan9 floppy provides for
reconfiguring the installed system).

-john