Dual boot between os3.1 and os3.9

[rare_j]

How might it be possible to set up a system that can dual boot between os31 and os39?

I've got a really nice os3.1 set-up on my A1200 on the first IDE drive, and I've got a load of space spare on an unused partition on the second IDE drive that I could load os39 on.

The only way I can think at the moment is to swap the boot priority of the partitions and reboot, or maybe do something with disabling automount or something but I cant think how it could work.  :-?

[Ronmor]

Hi,
 On the 4000 you hold both mouse buttons down while booting or rebooting, then go into boot options then select the drive or partition to boot from.
  I do this offen, it also help if one of the booting drive is starting to go bad then you can retrive most of the files on the bad drive by copying them to the good drive. ;-)

[Angus]

I think you could put 3.9 on your first partition and 3.1 on another, and control which boots with the preboot screen selecting the device you boot from.
But 3.9 will probably have some patches that cause a restart (3.1 might too) and this will cause it to go back to the first device, which can be very confusing.  

[Angus]

Oh yes, and how you have the tow OS's to recognise large hard drives could be an issue too, so be careful.

[pVC]

You can select the boot partition from early startup menu. If other version of OS needs reboot on first run, then it's easier to have it as bigger priority. Then you don't need to go early startup menu all the time (which works too) Better keep the bootable partitions under 2GB of size and under 4GB area of the HD, at least with internal ide and standard filesystems.

Other way is to install separate operating systems on the same partition. You'll need to remove system assigns and assign them to other location. You can make custom boot menu for that. For example there are programs in aminet which bring menu up if mouse button is pressed during the boot etc.

[Chain]

is there any way to set bootpriority by some software (hdtoolbox?) as i want to put it into startup-sequence.

i have a some ..:idea: with ismouse tool and dualboot



ismouse
if warn
   execute startup-old
else
  execute startup-sequence
endif

(needs some polishing, i know)

[pierre]

cool idea this dual boot thing....

boot prority...
you mean like
1 floppy
2 hd0:
3 hd1:

...

don't know, any body ever bood to cd-rom?

 

[Chain]

don't know, any body ever bood to cd-rom?

 

impossible, as u need any cd filesystem during boot.
(cd32 have one in a rom IIRC)

[Chain]

install script uses this command

addpart HD0: 8M bootable 1 dostype 0x444f5303 buffers 30 mask 0xFFFFFFFE

and we just need something similar, like

changebootpri DH0: 3 DH2: 1

[adolescent]

Chain wrote:
impossible, as u need any cd filesystem during boot.
(cd32 have one in a rom IIRC)

Possible on CSMK3/CSPPC.  Might also be possible with Kickflash (Romulus/Algor Pro, EFlash, etc.) or custom Kickstart ROM.

[Chain]

changebootpri.lha - found this tool

[Chain]

Is it really posible to boot directly from SCSI CD-rom with cyberstorm after switch-on???
is there cd filesystem in eprom?

[whiteb]

Chain wrote:
Is it really posible to boot directly from SCSI CD-rom with cyberstorm after switch-on???
is there cd filesystem in eprom?

I would have to say no, the SCSI device would be available for use as soon as the Cyberstorm was autoconfigured, which means SCSR drive autoboot is available (with the right bootpri), but the CDFS will still not be available.

PC CDROMS work from boot because the bios has basic CDROM filesystem.  I am unaware (could be wrong) of ANY CDROM systems autobooting on the amiga (except A570. CD32, CDTV etc)

[pVC]

There are ways to boot from CD-ROM... like this:
http://aminet.net/package.php?package=disk/cdrom/mountcd.lha

[rare_j]

Thanks for the suggestions. The program changebootpri looks promising but without any doc included in the archive I'm not going to touch it.
The idea of a custom startup-sequence to assign stuff to different locations depending on what os you want to use also seems preety cool, but I imagine it could get horribly complicated.
Booting from the CDROM is a nice idea but I imagine running os39 from it would be s-l-o-w! Also tricky to set up as I don't have a cd-burner on the A1200.
Anyway thinking about the CDROM idea made me realise my IDE splitter and driver enables booting from ZIP which will do for the time being... it will still be pretty s-l-o-w running os39 from a ZIP but at least it's easy... if the ZIP is inserted and bootable after the IDE driver is made resident it takes priority over the HDD.

EDIT looks like changebootpri is actually written by Thomas... he seems to know what he's doing with hard disks so I'll give it a try.