Mac / pc partitions within the first 4GB?

[kvasir]

I'm afraid Thomas is right, at least with PC-Task and Shapeshifter. When I upgraded my HDD to 40GB from 2.1GB, I re-formatted the 1st 1 GB of my system partition with shapeshifter several times before I finally figured it out. (I REALLY needed more coffee that day... :-D ) Ironically, though, hardfile emulation is actually faster than a partition if you have SFS and the right hardware. (060+192MB fast here, installed Win95 on both a partition and hardfile with a stopwatch, the hf+sfs was faster. I'll post the results if I can ever find them) If you want actual partitions, though, they need to be < the 4GB barrier. (Actually, I remember why it took so many times to get it to work here. The Macintosh partition crept over the 4gb barrier by a handful of KBs, and that was enough to kick MacOS into a "reformat the Amigas partitions" loop....)

[kvasir]

Interesting and useful info, thanks.  I was just contemplating setting up either PCTask, or PCx and Fusion, or Shapeshifter on my newly reconfigured A1200/060 w/256mb RAM.

256MB!?!?!?!? I thought I was overdoing it with 192MB!!

[kvasir]

Yeah, for running multiple emulators you'll need that. Though, even with a 060, it takes forever to get anything done on mine if both pc-task and shapeshifter are running, so the 192MB isn't too bad a deal. I have a 1260 too, and I thought the onboard was limited to 64MB? I have a 128MB stick in the SCSI board, though.

[kvasir]

Another vote for hardfiles here! I use them with Shapeshifter and they are faster than partitions in my case. Other advantages are that they are more flexible (multiple files of maximum 2Gb) and can be anywhere on your HD.

I use SFS BTW!

I was thinkng about switching to Hardfiles, but I like the ability to access the drives via workbench, and without using some stupid hardfile.device that has have the dosdriver tweaked every time I muck about with the directory structure. Plus my A+ instructor at the time mentioned that any OS can only support 3 or 4 HDD filesystems. (Meaning NTFS, FAT16, and FAT32. Should have mentioned it was Windows with this restriction, as this remark resulted in an Amiga Workbench/Linux KDE screengrab spam attack on his e-mail account courtesy of myself and another student who happens to be a penguin fan...)

[kvasir]

What about this:

OS3.1 - 25MB
OS3.9 - 1500MB
OS4.0 - 1500MB
MAC - 800MB
PC - 500MB

Is 500MB enough to install win95? (and what about win98, while I'm at it )
Is 800MB enough for MacOS8.2 plus lotsa games/apps?

Sigh.. a 120GB drive and only the 4GB available for operating systems.. How inefficient.

You could certainly set it up that way, however, if you use IDEfix (What I'm using), as soon as the setpatch command in s:startup-sequence starts, you have access past the 4GB barrier, and it will mount any partitions found there. If you want to maximize the <4GB part, you could always use a tiny boot partition, with whatever bootselecter proggy you might use installed on it, and have as large an os 3.1/3.9/4.0 partition you like past 4GB. (Simply a case of assigning c: L: libs: etc.. to the relevant partition), though I believe 3.9 can take a path as an argument after "loadwb", though I've never tried it) The only reason I'd have a larger partition <4GB is for miggy stuff that REALLY needs the <4GB area. (Of which the only thing I can find are emulators and some FFS disk optimization/repair stuff, eg. DiskSalv. which HATES SFS...) Oh, and VMM too, I think. (Though I have no idea why you would use that w/ 256MB of RAM...)
Anyway, 800 MB would be ample space for MacOS, unless you're doing something incredibly space-hungry with it. 500MB for the PC should be fine for Win95, but its slow as hell, even under maximum memory buffer and RTG Gfx. Also, I would work more towards 1GB if you plan on having alot of windows stuff. If possible, I'd use win3.11 WFW, along with Calmira for visual flare if needed. (I have a dual-booting system, which requests which operating system you wan in the autoexec.bat file, and switches to W95 or W31. I only did this because I got sick of switching the partition settings every time I wanted to change which version of win to use. If you use W95 OSR2, you'll need a patch for this to work with W3.11, though.) I've also tried to install W98, though only half-heartedly. It locked pc-task (or it was working perfectly, and I'm just impatient ), and its "official" reqs. are a bit higher than what pc-task can emulate. If you DO manage to get it to work, though, please don't be shy about it! (Perhaps Win98Lite?)
The PC partition you can format using hdtoolbox, crossdos, and the format command. (FAT95 might work better, though I've not done this yet) Just use MSH\00 as the filesystem when using HDToolbox. You're better off starting pc-task via a boot-floppy, and using fdisk to allocate the the C: drive, and then use the whetever installation method your doing. (If you have windows setup on a CD-Rom, you'll need to install pctcdrom.sys, the docs on how to do this are included with pc-task.)  PCTCrossmount (included somewhere in the pc-task draer) should mount the partition via crossdos if you save pc-tasks preferences after configuring it. (And I believe it saves the dosdriver mount files in the ram: or T: disk, in case you want to add them to devs:dosdrivers)
My Mac partition is under custom file system, RES\56, and I mount it Amigaside w/ CrossMac. Again, its best to just let the emulator format it, and run the OS installer. After that, if you have crossmac, I believe there's a proggy on there that will automagically create a dosdriver for it.
Hope this helps!
(PS. I'll try to re-check this thead as much as I usually check forums, however, I live in SW Wisconsin, and there's a huge blizzard pointed at me right now. The power/internet/my sanity is bound to quit when that happens....)

[kvasir]

Kvasir, thanks for your VERY informative reply. With this I think I am able to set everything up the way I want to. Running Win98lite would be a fun thing to try out, but before that I will have to install SFS and setup the drive the way I described.

Hope that blizzard didnt catch ya, might need your help later on

No prob, don't get too much opportunity to geek-speak with the M$ loving crowd around my neck of the woods. Blizzard is here, dumped a ton of show, Which I now need to shovel off my driveway, which is about 50 yards long and 1 1/2 feet deep.. (45.7 M and .3 M for the European crowd ) Time to check craigslist for snow-blowers. Then probably end up building a snowman or something with the 3YO daughter. The wind is picking up though, why I'm not going to work today. Visibility is crap with the wind now, and was crap with the snow falling before.. ugh... I need to move to the carribean. (This way I can bit(h about hurricanes instead) Anyway, if you have any probs, I'll be tinkering about with various computers on my snow-day, as the electric grid seems to have (surprisingly) survived the storm. (I was working for a call-center handling CSR work for Time-Warner mid-ohio when last years hurricane decided to stay a storm on its way through to the atlantic, tearing up Ohios electric/phone/cable/anything else infrastructure... That wan NOT a fun day @ work, and has caused my paranoia about today, even if Wisconsin is set up to handle this sort of thing a little better... )