Boot / boot loader problems

[Loper]

I am running into a minor snag that perhaps someone could help with. It's not a show-stopper per se, but is not the optimal situation.

I have two hard drives in my system, 120 GB and 80 GB, both Western Digital IDE. Windows 98SE resides on the 120 GB drive (primary master) and Linux (installed from Knoppix) resides on the 80 GB drive (primary slave). All partitions except the ReiserFS Linux partition are FAT32. Linux can see all the partitions, Win 98 sees all but the Linux and swap partitions.

The problem is as follows: Win98SE cannot directly "see" the 120 gig drive without help; I had to use the WD OEM utilities to install an INT 13h handler (EZ-BIOS) in the boot track of the first hard drive and partition the drive. This means that I can't install a boot loader to the boot track, since it will clobber EZ-BIOS. My current solution is to use GAG graphical boot manager http://gag.sourceforge.net from floppy, which then boots into LiLo on the second drive. This works OK, but I would rather boot directly from a hard drive and skip the floppy.

A message I once read implied that there's a version of fdisk out there that works with Win98 and does not require the INT 13h handler. Does anyone know where I can get this version?

All in all, I'm pretty happy with this install. I'm learning more about Linux than I ever have, and I'm running about 90% Linux now; it would probably be more, if not for the fact that I have a part-time job teaching computers to seniors in a nearby town -- they all run Windows in various flavors, and that ain't gonna change for a while (not that I can't sneak in a little something about Mozilla, etc. sometimes).

[fingers99]

A way round which occurs to me is to

apt-get install grub

then swap the drives around. Grub has a really 'orrible free form syntax which I can never quite get my head around, but there's plenty of documentation out there (and the HOWTOs). The miracle is that Grub can trick Windows into thinking that it is the first drive when it isn't. Kewl, eh?

So, writing Grub to the mbr won't clobber ezdrive and Windoze can't clobber grub.