🚀 go-pugleaf

George Durbridge <gdurb@melbourne.dialix.com.au> wrote in article
<880726690.300676@edison.dialix.com.au>...
> Win 95B can use fat32, and I doubt fips would work with that - the docs
> for my copy of fips indicate fairly close reliance on the fat16 spec. 
But
> the warning seems a bit conservative, as not all installations of Win 95B

> are on fat32 - on small drives, it installs fat16. 

Not quite correct: (I install Win95B (2.1) and WinNT4.0 in my line of work
every day of the week).

Win95's file system type is actually determined by the person who installs
your OS for you. The Win/Dos fdisk program and version determines this. You
are asked with the Fat32 enabled fdisk program "Do You Want To enable Large
Disk Support Y/N [N]" : If you answer Y it will fdisk as Fat32 and the
normal format C: command in at a  dos prompt after a reboot will then
format the disk as FAT32 regardless of the size of the disk. There are cli
switches which allow you to change the block sizes on the format command
for extreme cases of hard drives , but generally  there isn't a lot of need
to use them.

You'll find that the lame machines from "package deal kings" and lower end
Dell particularly, are formatted Fat16 and any retailer worth anything will
ask you how you desire your C: drive formatted before installing your even
lamer Windows95.

Of course if your running NT then your NTFS (unless your running with no
security/fat16) and you have no hope unless you use a 3rd party program
such as Partition Magic 3.0 to change the types.

There is inbuilt support (apparently) to convert fat16 to fat 32 and back
again in the forthcoming (no real need to upgrade to) Windows98.

Personally I'd be buying a cheap second drive (The Quantum 3.2 EIDE/UATA
are really good value) and using that only for Linux. Who wants their Linux
installation possibly stuffed by Win95?? I don't.

Ivan.