Hi Len

Things to keep in mind

Modern BIOS's have the option of enabling LBA - so any talk of putting partitions inside the first 1024 cylinders is not relevant. In general , what needs to be in a boot sector is a bootloader and a partition table.

With LBA, LILO is able to create a Map file containing the Raw locations of kernels that reside in Extended partitions well beyong 1024 cylinders.

Again - you dont need a single boot partition were all the OS kernels are stored - what is vital is to have a Map file in a boot sector which contains the locations of kernels that can reside in either primary or extended partitions.

Remember - the kernels can reside in the boot directories of the Root patitions of distributions well beyond 1024 cylinders.

a pI system will more than likely have a bios limitation that won't see a hard drive over 8 gig. adding an ata66, or ata100 ide controller card will allow for the bigger hdd's to be installed. not sure how the bios functions, when a controller card is installed. will the mb bios, then hand over functions to the controller bios, or does the mb bios become a problem?

edit: here's something that i got from a google search regarding lba, and large hdd support (for info, not arguement- i do believe i've learned something regarding chs, and lba) :
http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/Large-Disk.html#toc6

found something on the "nuni boot loader"- new to me for sure (from the large hdd link):
http://www.icewalkers.com/Linux/Soft...9680/nuni.html


here's a multiboot config that shows how beneficial xosl can be.

Good link - well done - notice the bit about LBA - that's the key here.

Most modern BIOS's enable LBA - with LBA and LILO v21.4 or newer you can boot kernels anywhere on your drive.

On one of my computers I am currently Triple booting Win98se, Red Hat 9 and Mandrake 9.1.

I have no boot partitions - Red Hat's kernel 2.4.20-8 is simply stored in the boot directory of Red Hats root partition - the root partition and hence boot directory are well beyond 1024 cylinders.

Like wise Mandrakes kernel is stored in Mandrakes boot directory within Mandrakes root partition - again this root partition is well beyond 1024 - its actually near the other end of the drive.

XOSL is new to me