Hello those more knowledgeable than I. I apologize ahead of time if this is not in the correct forum:

I have been trying to get xp and SCO 5.0.7 to coexist on the same system. I have tried several different ways to make both work, here's the list:

-install xp, image it, move the partition to the end of drive, verify it boots, image again,

-boot off of SCO cd, install SCO, fdisk'ing to put SCO at beginning of drive, making partition active, complete install, reboot,

-boot SCO, edit /etc/default/boot for bootos loader, reboot,

-at BOOT: prompt bootos xp, get the SYS 0VF (i think) error when trying to get to xp.

ALSO Tried using SYSTEM COMMANDER:

--installed xp, syscom, moved partition, rebooted,
--syscom comes up, goto partitioning, os wizard(all defaults), tried changing settings but didn't work, reboot,
--at this point, syscom has unix boot selection along with xp, a:, and cdrom,
--choose cdrom to boot SCO cd, do the same installation, reboot,
--again, get the SYS 0VF error,
--reboot with syscom cd, reinstall syscom, XP loads, but there is no option for SCO. . .
--somehow get SCO option on syscom, choose it, syscom header comes up, but just beeps, no booting.

Ok, I think the SYS 0VF has to do with the MBR, is there a fix? a fix that makes everything work?

Is the bootos howto on the SCO cd accurate? Is bootos still viable? Is there something better?

I have tried every boot manager I could find with similar results. Help would be appreciated as I have been thrown into maintaining old SCO apps without any SCO experience.

Personally, I'd go pull an old Pentium or Pentium II out of a closet and use that for SCO. OS 5.0.7. will run very well on a PII-350 w/128MB of RAM. Will even run acceptably on a Pentium 133!

Thanks for your opinion. Normally, I would do just as you prescribed, but the way the workstations are used requires them to dual boot between XP and SCO. THey are connected to an external CMM machine and the legacy software is specifically written for use with SCO. The other software requires XP. The current workstation setup is a PIII 1gig, 512 mem . . . booting between SCO and NT 4 via syscom 2000.

So, I am stuck with a new version of syscom that says it supports booting between SCO and Xp . . . but doesn't, and doing the bootos command in SCO . . . which doesn't appear to work due to the 1024 cylinder issue. . .SCO is first part fo the drive and xp the second.

Where I left off on friday was imaging a the hardrive with SCO on the first part of the partition and xp the second. I rebooted and actually got SCO to boot normally. SCO fdisk reported that the xp partition existed as an OS2 partition. When I get in in 5 hours, I will create the alias for bootos and hope for the best.

Why are you moving the XP partition after every install?

Mainly because, I cannot get both OS's to begin below 1024th cylinder. SCO supposedly can start anywhere on the disk, but this most recent experience has proven that not to be true. It must have the first 30 megs of the hardrive for the /BOOT. XP, however, can start anywhere on the disk. . . verified, although only by itself. Now someone in one of the forums said to start both below the 1024th cylinder . . . not quite sure how.

RIght now, I have both OS's installed, booting SCO and trying the bootos command again. When it finally tries to boot the XP partition, I get the CYL OVF --- actually the same thing I got previously, but didn't remember the exact letters.

. . . and thanks for your opinions and guidance. Now, how I did it:

I've been in contact w/ v-com (system commander's tech support). They were still clueless, with one exception. The one guy that's been there awhile remembered that both OS's had to start below 8192mb, or 8gigs. Well, I reimaged my machine and gave XP the first 6gigs, installed SCO, fdisk'ing to make the partition about the same size as the XP partition, rather than using rest of disk. (reason is, XP needs more space than SCO, will format other partitions later) After SCO completed, I was sort of amazed, syscom was originally installed on the XP part, but as usual was overwritten. SCO booted and I got to the BOOT: prompt and typed bootos ? which gave me two partitions to choose, then I chose bootos 3 corresponding to the NT/OS2 partition. The screen flickered off then on and XP's splash screen came up. It ran a checkdisk and needed to reboot, did the same process again, it came up just fine, everything worked. . . Booted to SCO, everything I set there up worked.

I bet it all comes back to that 1024 cylinder thing. The machine I am using is a 3 year gateway workstation, Pentium4, 1gigmem, Nvidia Quadro, 40gig hd. . . . according to the fdisk in SCO, everytime I went past the first 30 megs of the hardrive, I was surpassing the limit. . . well, INIT 13, that bios thingy, although not present in the bios, worked. I was able to boot both and get both to do their function. Also, edited /etc/default/boot for BOOT: prompt alias' to boot into XP.

Thanks Again!