FAT32 Partitions with Knoppix

[John in Brisbane]

Hi,

I'm trying to partition for Win 98 a number of HP Pc's with CD Readers, but no floppy drives (or IDE sockets). I've been going round in circles trying to create bootable CD's for DOS or Win98, but have used my Knoppix Bootable Linux CD successfully in order to prove to myself that the CD and CPU are OK.

From the Knoppix docs it appears that QParted is part of the bundled software. Can I use it to partition the hard drive - even temporarily so that I can read conventional DOS or Win 98 install CD's?

Change of Subject - I'm legally blind. How can I adjust the Knoppix screens to display larger icons and text?

Many thanks, JOhn

PS I'm stubborn enough to persist with software solutions to partition these hard drives, but if necessary I'll piggy back them temporarily to existing hard drives in PCs with floppy drives.

[Cuddles]

Hi,

I'm trying to partition for Win 98 a number of HP Pc's with CD Readers, but no floppy drives (or IDE sockets). I've been going round in circles trying to create bootable CD's for DOS or Win98, but have used my Knoppix Bootable Linux CD successfully in order to prove to myself that the CD and CPU are OK.

From the Knoppix docs it appears that QParted is part of the bundled software. Can I use it to partition the hard drive - even temporarily so that I can read conventional DOS or Win 98 install CD's?

Change of Subject - I'm legally blind. How can I adjust the Knoppix screens to display larger icons and text?

Many thanks, JOhn

PS I'm stubborn enough to persist with software solutions to partition these hard drives, but if necessary I'll piggy back them temporarily to existing hard drives in PCs with floppy drives.

Ok, let me see what I can do here...

( 1 ) it appears your Win98 CD is a "upgrade", and not a "full version", thus, it won't boot.
( 2 ) you have personal computers without floppy drives, but have hard drives and a CD-ROM drive.
( 3 ) have been able to successfully test hardware enough to prove you can boot bootable CD-ROMs, and can boot Knoppix.
( 4 ) you can use "knoppix" to create DOS or FAT partitions, just no operating systems for these, you need DOS or Windows for that.
( 5 ) you can use "knoppix" to read DOS and Windows install CD's already, you can even read NTFS drives, and with the newer version of Knoppix, can even write to them.
( 6 ) you can either go into KDE Control Center and change the type font (point) size, or decrease your resolution on your video. Either of these two, or a combination, will effectively increase visibility - you can also use the KMagnifier (used to zoom in on the desktop where the mouse is at)
( 7 ) your welcome, hopefully, I helped.
( 8 ) you could do that as well, I have "cloned" hard drives before. As long as the drives themselves are not different, or the systems they are installed on. Just connect, duplicate, and take the "clone" out.

Now, my own thoughts....

It is always a good thing to use DOS or Windows to format DOS and Windows systems, and Linux for Linux systems. Not sure if your post was intended on getting your Win98 systems running, or Knoppix. From how I read your post, you are attempting to use Knoppix to get your Win98 systems to boot, this may not be the best way to go about that, considering that Knoppix is not Windows, and is Linux. You may want to use Windows to create a Windows bootable system.

Ms. Cuddles

[John in Brisbane]

Thanks for the marvellous reply. I've combed through the Knoppix CD but it is not obvious to me which application I could use to initially partition the HDD. I was expecting to find QParted there but it wasn't.

Your advice would be appreciated.

Thanks, John

[Cuddles]

John,

I have been a long follower of Win98, I was on the "front line" for Customer Support in M$ for its "roll out"... I know Win98 uses FAT32, which is the next eveolution of DOS, the next after FAT32 is now NTFS, but Win98 can't understand that file system structure.

If you want to partition a drive for Win98, use FDISK, from the Win98 Install CD, or, if you have a "Recovery" boot disk from the Win98 Install, use that... (If you can boot the Win98 CD, during the installation it will ask: Do you want to create a bootable recovery floppy? - use that...

Also, I always had a problem with the format/system function in the Format Floppy, looking around in the "Help" within Win98, I located information stating that in some instances the formatter in Win98 would not create bootable floppies correctly. It suggested some "obscure" program that actually is on the Win98 CD that creates the bootable system floppy in an "image" format, and it worked.

Ms. Cuddles

[moustache]

You could approach this form the opposite direction....if you install (or at least boot into) knoppix off the cdrom, you can then download and install a dos demulator (called "dosemu" , search for the site on google or yahoo, you need the dosbinaries file and dosemu file itself...both small) and then you can run dos programs in linux, even over a network (using lineighborhood to map network drives) if your computers have ethernet cards. You can also use WINE that comes with knoppix to run windows programs (even over a network) also.

Moustache

[Cuddles]

Moustache,

From what I know...

WINE needs the libs from Windows to run, or it won't run...

DosEmu needs a version of DOS to run, or you need to use its installable "freeDos"...

I had an "old" DOS program that I tried to run in WINE, it refused, but to get WINE running, I had to have a Windows installed system. I got the DOS program to run in DosEmu, but it required a version of DOS to run, which I didn't have, only the DOS from within Windows98, so, I ended up getting the "FreeDOS" for DosEmu, and then everything worked fine.

For the record, both "dosemu" and "dosemu-freedos" are available using apt-get install - this taken from a "apt-cache search dosemu"

Ms. Cuddles