Crazy question about OS installation! ;)

[SKAN]

Ok, this is the point:
I'm about to buy a new HD for my good old 1200, and this time I wanna play around with OS installations...
Basicly I just wanna have 2 partitions, one for the OS stuff and one for everything else. Is there any way to install multiple systems in a single partition? I mean: 3.1, 3.5/3.9 and even 1.2/1.3 (provided I've got a Devs/Kickstarts/ full of grabbed roms , multiple startups with multiple setups, the good old exec_v.44 below and so on?...OK, you could say: "Go on with multiple partitions and don't be silly!", but if someone have experienced something similar I would be happy to know...

[Ilwrath]

I'm about to buy a new HD for my good old 1200, and this time I wanna play around with OS installations...
Basicly I just wanna have 2 partitions, one for the OS stuff and one for everything else. Is there any way to install multiple systems in a single partition? I mean: 3.1, 3.5/3.9

No reason you can't do this...  I did it before.  What you'll need to do, though, is hand install things...  And I made a set of "virtual" roots, and assigned sys: and the others to whichever one I was booting from.  in other words, on dh0, I had...

dh0:s/
dh0:c/
(This set contained the startup and selection code.  I used a really cool AmigaOS looking startup manager, too.  I can find you the name, if you like.  it was on Aminet, somewhere.)

anyhow, for each OS, I had a directory with the subdirs under it, like...

dh0:os31/  (This would be assigned as SYS: if I was booting 3.1)
dh0:os31/s  (3.1's S: directory)
dh0:os31/c  (etc...)

likewise,
dh0:os39/
dh0:os39/s (etc...)

Certainly, it can be done.  It was a bit of hassle, but a unique system.  You also have to be careful when installing programs, cuz some installers will grab for dh0:s/startup-sequence, instead of your assigned startup-sequence.  And therefore, modify the wrong file....

and even 1.2/1.3 (provided I've got a Devs/Kickstarts/ full of grabbed roms

That's not gonna work, at all.  As soon as you kick an A1200 to 1.3, you lose your scsi.device (AT hard-drive support).  Hence, no hard drive available, at all, from that point on...  ;-)

[Matt_H]

I would strongly suggest more than 2 partitions, especially if you want to have multiple versions of AmigaOS available. Booting into one system or another is possible, as said, but very difficult (you'll have to do a lot of tinkering with your 'default' startup-sequence that asks which system you want to boot into. It's much easier if you have multiple bootable partitions and select which one you want to use from the Early Startup menu.

Additionally, more than 2 partitions on the drive will make your life much easier if one of them fails. DH1 dies? No problem, back it up to DH2. That may not be possible if you set aside only a small amount of space for your SYS:. Or if 3.1 gets clobbered, you can run the salvage operation from 3.9's partition.

[SKAN]

Thank you very much, you gave me a good point to start from...

That's not gonna work, at all. As soon as you kick an A1200 to 1.3, you lose your scsi.device (AT hard-drive support). Hence, no hard drive available, at all, from that point on...

 Is there any way to "emulate" it somehow? I remember I could easily boot from HD (a590) with an A500+1.3.
I know, it was REAL SCSI and not IDE, but who knows...

[Ilwrath]

Is there any way to "emulate" it somehow? I remember I could easily boot from HD (a590) with an A500+1.3.

There isn't any way that I know of.  I search for one every so often, just in hopes of being able to do it.  ;-)

As far as I know, all you'd need would be a patched kickstart with scsi.device code from the 3.0 one...  I don't know if it would fit in the 256kb footprint of the 1.3 ROM, though.  If you find a way, please let me know!  :-)  I'd love to do this, as well.

[Matt_H]

Hmmmm... could you extract scsi.device from the 3.1 ROM, put it on a floppy, kick in 1.3, and then use some tool to make it memory resident?

More trouble than it's worth, in my opinion. The main point of 1.3 compatibility is for games, now made partially redundant by WHDLoad. Most productivity apps for 1.3 are either completely obsolete or have updated 2.x+ counterparts.

[Ilwrath]

More trouble than it's worth, in my opinion. The main point of 1.3 compatibility is for games, now made partially redundant by WHDLoad. Most productivity apps for 1.3 are either completely obsolete or have updated 2.x+ counterparts.

Very true, of course.  I just think he wants to do this for the same reason I want to.  It's a cool hack.  And it's fun to show off and mess around with Workbench 1.3.  The stripes are funky.

[SKAN]

Very true, of course.  I just think he wants to do this for the same reason I want to.  It's a cool hack.  And it's fun to show off and mess around with Workbench 1.3.  The stripes are funky.

Now you're talkin'!!!

[Matt_H]

:-)

A dedicated machine to run Boing!

[nOw2]

As far as I know, all you'd need would be a patched kickstart with scsi.device code from the 3.0 one...  I don't know if it would fit in the 256kb footprint of the 1.3 ROM, though.  If you find a way, please let me know!  :-)  I'd love to do this, as well.

The scsi.device for the A600/1200 won't run under OS1.3. There's nothing to stop anyone writing one that would, but funnily enough nobody seems bothered

It wouldn't need to be patched into the ROM, a simple device + mountlist would suffice though you'd lose HD booting.

[Doobrey]

Matt_H wrote:
Hmmmm... could you extract scsi.device from the 3.1 ROM, put it on a floppy, kick in 1.3, and then use some tool to make it memory resident?

It`d be a lot easier to use the scsi.device from the 3.5 /3.9 romupdate file. IIRC,the one in 3.1 rom is hard coded to run from its address in rom, whereas the ones in the romupdate are relocatable.
 But then it might need functions of OS3.x to work...