On Thu, 9 Jul 1998, Doug Thistlethwaite wrote: > Hello everyone, > > I am going to help one of the engineers at my company to build a personal > system. He has expressed interest in learning about linux and would like to > have a system that will dual boot in both windows 98 and linux.
As has been said, the best way to handle this is to partition for both systems, install Windows, *then* install Linux. > The current plans are for a K6-II 300MHz system with fast wide SCSI disks. Nice. Should be plenty of fun. Don't skimp on RAM, though - Linux can actually *use* all of the RAM, not waste it like Windows. For a system like this, 64MB should be the minimum to settle for. Go for 128MB or more while memory's so cheap. > I am thinking of installing two drives (one for linux and the other for > windoze). I would like to make this system very easy for the engineer > to boot into either OS. Two drives is a good choice. That can simplify partitioning issues a great deal. One suggestion, though - if you can, put the Linux swap partition(s) on a different drive from the rest of the filesystems. This will help minimize head seeking, and anything that improves swap speed is a win. (Hopefully you'll put enough RAM in that swapping is rare, though.) > My questions are: > > 1. What procedure and order should I follow in installing the two OS'es. Definitely Windows first. I have seen reports of Windows detecting Linux partitions as "unused" and autoformatting them. :-/ Once Windows is installed, you can proceed with the Linux install. (The Linux-Win95 HOWTO should be very helpful, and still applicable to Win98.) > 2. Recommendations on FW SCSI adapters? Adaptec is common, and they just announced active support for Linux. Currently, though, the drivers are reverse-engineered and some people have had problems with them. (It's rare, but I've seen a few reports.) Buslogic, Mylex, and DPT all have a good history of support for Linux and the people who have DPT adapters seem to really like them. The DPT drivers are actually written by DPT, I think. If you want to save some money, NCR-53c8xx controllers are inexpensive (not cheap :-> ) and give solid performance. You can get a Fast SCSI-II controller for $53! My Fast-Wide controller cost me $100. > 3. We are going to want to add a CD-R drive to this system. Should we > look for a SCSI device or use the on-board IDE interface? Does the > operation of IDE devices compromise the access speed of SCSI devices? CD-R's should be SCSI, from what I've heard. SCSI just handles multiprocessing a bit better, and doesn't need quite the same amount of CPU attention that IDE does. It's critical to keep data streaming to the CD-R when you're burning a CD, and if it gets interrupted, you have a coaster. With SCSI, the CPU is barely involved when the drives transfer to the CD-R, and you're free to get some work done with the CPU. You might be able to get by with an IDE CD drive for making disc-to-disc copies, but the CD-R should be SCSI. Since the IDE and SCSI bus are on different interrupts, they don't really interfere with each other much. IDE CD drives are a noticeably less expensive (though often cheaper, too) than SCSI. Sincerely, Ray Ingles (248) 377-7735 [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Technically, Windows is an operating system, which means that it supplies your computer with the basic commands it needs to suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, stop operating." - Dave Barry -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null
