Windows 98 and DOS 6.22 manual dual boot?

[sinephase]

Hey guys, new here, hope you can help

I recently threw together a computer with a P1 150mhz mobo, 64MB SIMM RAM, 2MB PCI graphics card and SB16 waveffects ISA card, a 1.6GB HDD and a 125MB HDD, as well as a quad CDROM, 5 1/4 floppy and 3 1/2 floppy.

Anyway, I want to be able to manually boot each OS through the BIOS when I want to (if you're wondering why, I want a straight up DOS OS separate from the win98 OS). It works, but the thing is that I have the 1.6GB with win98 set as master and the 125MB with DOS 6.22 set as slave. When I boot to DOS (selecting D: as the boot drive) it sets the slave drive as C: (normal I realise) but then I can't access the 1.6GB drive, it just isn't there.
Based on a microsoft KB article I found, it should see the first 2 drives and assign them letters automatically, but it's not. As far as I know it should be working.

Any ideas? Anything I should watch out for in the hard drive settings in the BIOS?

Thanks in advance for any help

[dosraider]

Details details .....?
FAT of the 1.6GB HD?

.... and in fact you're usually easier using a bootmanager.
Install a bootmanager on that 1.6GB HD, partition the 1.6GB with one 120 MB FAT16 for MsDos, rest in FAT32 for Win98.

Format that second HD as FAT16 logical D: that you can use in both MsDos/W98.

When booting the partition manager will ask which system you want to boot.

[sinephase]

Thanks for the quick reply dosraider

I'm pretty sure the 1.6GB is FAT32; default formatting for win98.

I can't say I'm at all familiar with any boot manager for something like this? Is it just a program I can download or something?

Also, I don't have the 6.2 DOS disks (it was already on the 125MB drive) which is one reason I wanted to have it running on the separate drive. On that note, can I just copy all the files from the DOS directory to back it up?

So I take it you're saying unless I use FAT 16 it won't be seen by DOS?

It's been a while since I've messed around with an actual DOS computer actually installing all the hardware

[dosraider]

MsDos 6.22 can only see/work with FAT16 partitions, so it will never will be able to see your 1.6GB FAT32 HD.

Bootmanagers: google, you'll find enough info about them, and there are some good freeware bootmanagers out there. Same for the partition managers.
Some partition managers can shrink your W98 partition and create a new primary dos partition without any data loss (PQMagic to name one)

To bring your existing MsDos 6.22 partition to another one:
Format a floppy with
format a: /s
This will make that floppy bootable, and you can use it to make your eventually new dospartition dos bootable. On the same floppy copy:
Format.com
Sys.com

Copy all your dosfiles on floppies.( You can use the ol'PKZIP to back your files up ....)

Create a new primary dospartition, be sure to set the right one 'active' with the bootmanager.
Insert the first floppy, reboot from that floppy and do a
format c: /s
Recreate the needed dir structure ( most probably c:\dos\ ) and put all the files back.

And check your PMs.

[Edit]
Also:
If you really want to learn about bootmanagers, partitions and such stuff, get yourself VPC2004 or VPC2007 and create some dos/win98 VMs.
Great advantage is that if you screw up it's only a matter of deleting a VM folder and start over.
Ideal to learn about that stuff.