DOS & UNIX co-existence on AT&T 6386s: guidelines sought

[~XT6561110~Frank McGee~C23~L25~6326~]

In article <2892 at infmx.UUCP> aland at infmx.UUCP (alan denney) writes:

>As far as I know, the 6386s do not have inherent dual-boot capability, 
>so I plan to have the primary UNIX partition as the boot partition 
>and boot DOS from floppy when needed.  Is this off-base?  Can I have
>a DOS partition sitting on one of the drives that comes into play
>only when I boot from a DOS diskette, and have all of the UNIX
>partitions recognizeable when I boot UNIX?

You could also have MSDOS on the first partition, and boot
MSDOS off the hard disk.  But /dev/swap will perform better if
MSDOS is a non-bootable partition farther out on the disk (ie,
/dev/swap will be on the faster inner tracks).  If you aren't
swapping you won't notice the difference though......

Now here's where I started to wonder....

>Quick note on the planned configurations:
>
>   6386/25                                6386/33        
>------------------                   ------------------
>16 MB memory                         16-24 MB memory
>1 135MB ESDI drive                   2 300 MB ESDI drives
>1 300MB ESDI drive
>
>                        both
>                        ----
>          AT&T UNIX System V/386 Rel 3.2.2  and MS-DOS 3.3
>          AT&T 125MB Streaming tape unit
>          AT&T 329M VGA card & VDC600 VGA monitor
>          AT&T 2400 baud external modem

You're okay (as far as I know) to here...

>          Consensys PowerPorts 16-terminal serial controller

The last time I checked, these cards require a 512K shared memory area
that starts on a 512K boundary.  This limits you to a 12 MB of RAM
configuration, because the 6386/33 supports 4, 8, 12, 16, 24, 28, 32
and 40 MB configurations.  Since you need to have a 512K segment for
the card between 0 and 16 MB, you need to have the next lowest memory
configuration; ie, 12 MB.  On the older Olivetti 6386's it was
possible to create a memory "hole" for cards; this isn't possible on
the 6386/SX, 6386/25, 6386/33, or Model S.  If you install the
Consensys card in a 6386/SX/25/33 with more than 12 MB you won't be
able to address the Consensys card.  I suggest you try another card
vendor that uses 64K of RAM on 64k boundaries (ie, it will fit between
512K and 1 MB) such as the Computone, Bell Technologies, or AT&T IPC
1600.

>          Consensys PowerStor caching ESDI disk controller

Don't know if this will work, we use the Western Digital 1007A-WA2.

>          3Com 3C503 Ethernet card (also for use with PC-NFS under DOS)

AT&T doesn't have and doesn't sell Unix drivers for the 3C503.  AT&T
has two separate and distinct TCP/IP platforms for 386 Unix; we only
support the AT&T TCP/IP Interface for Unix (ie, Micom/Racal-Interlan
product) or the Wollongong Integrated Networking (WIN) TCP/IP 386
over an AT&T StarLAN 10 NAU, EN100, or Fiber NAU card.

Hope you were already aware of these items.  Hope you have a happy
holiday season !

-- 
Frank McGee, AT&T
Tier 3 Complementary Channel Sales Support
attmail!fmcgee