I am going to install FreeBSD to a secondary HD--deleting an old FAT32 space in the first primary partition to house BSD.

Anyhow...here's the setup: (as bios ordering)

Primary Master (40 Gig) contains:
1. Windows
2. Red Hat 7.3

Secondary Master (20 Gig) contains:
1. Old FAT32 (useless windows distro) to be deleted...BSD will go here
2. Slackware 8.1
3. Distro "testing" (approx 3.5 Gig) which is presently housing slackware.

Now, the question is, what would happen if I let BSD write a MBR where I'm going to put it? I really don't want to install the bootloader, if at all possible, in the event that something goes wrong.

I presently boot all my Linux distros by a boot floppy.

So, what I want to know is can I *still* boot my Linux distros with a floppy if I install a bootloader OR let BSD write it's own MBR where I install it?

Also, if I let it write a MBR, will I automatically boot into BSD when I fire up the pc.

Also, I read there is a way to create boot floppies for FreeBSD, but it looks like it's more trouble than it's worth, so I'd rather go with the above options, if at all possible.

Thanks in advance.

Installing the boot loader won't stop your Linux boot floppy working. I think you can configure FreeBSD's bootloader to do multiple boot (with a menu), or just go straight into FreeBSD.

Alex

Thanks...I just didn't want to screw up my booting options.

Since I change distros often, I never install bootloaders, finding disks more convenient for my individual use.

What I've fallen in love with over the years are removable drive trays. I think I paid around $16 for the receiver that came with one tray and about $7 for each additional tray. The ones I have I bought at Frys and are InClose Designs brand (http://www.sanmax.com/products/index...t=1_MobileDock)

I installed one of these in my play machine and have about 6-7 trays with drives in them (and can swap other drives into a tray in less than 2 minutes and tray swapping is about 5 seconds.) It allows me to throw a disk tray into the PC, load an O/S on the drive and goof with it, and either save it for later usage or scratch it.

I keep several O/S's around at any given time and still have a Slackware 2.3 Professional and a few older FreeBSD builds hanging around for nostalgic purposes. Never a worry about boot loaders, etc as I just throw one O/S on each and load it with an MBR entry. It's nice to be able to experiment at will with never worrying about messing up other partitions or having to tweak boot loaders.

Anyway, just thought I'd throw that out there =]

tpro