Multiple Os's Not Vm's

[Sidewinder]

Having had to use 3 laptops this week to communicate with various devices as the software will not reside under the same OS, & will also not run acceptably in a VM.

I'm thinking about a BIG HDD with say 8 or 9+ perhaps OS's on it and a boot menu, would Linux be able to run the boot menu, or would a boot loader controller be better.

Oh yes the are M$ OS's & I'm not thinking about using a MAC as they don't have real native serial ports these days, which I need TBH.

So has anyone done this is it feasible?

Could it work?

What boot loader have you used, or would you suggest?

 

[Marvo]

I'm thinking about a BIG HDD with say 8 or 9+ perhaps OS's on it and a boot menu, 

It's going to get very messy. Rather persevere with the VM options.

 

[steptoe]

how many OS's ?

do you need any data on them?

XP 'needs' at least 20 GB to run reasonably,

UBUNTU will run happily on 5 ,!

I run 5 different linux and XP from a 80G drive, but, NO data on any of them, worth mentioning,

Ive run quite a lot of different OS from one drive, the biggest hurdle Ive ever met is that of trying to get 2 different windoze OS to stop overwriting each other on install,

windoze simply wants to use the whole disc, or any partition that is FAT, or it thinks it can write to,

this has happened in XP , VISTA, 7 & 8

I eventually gave up trying to get more than one windoze on one disc, even though GRUB {linux bootloader, could see them, only ever the last installed windoze was not corrupt}it could prob be done if you knew what you were doing,

I didnt/ still dont,,,,,,

I'd be inclined to go with the multiple discs, and chose which one to use on boot,

put GRUB on a boot partition of the ONLY bootable disc, then use this to pick what disc to boot,

:C

dunno, but it might work.

You'll have more hassle than ever

Multiple Drives is the only option for this (hot swop) or Large USBs or 2.5" HDD and a Caddy

You can get USB to Serial Adapters  :innocent

that are a nightmare needing obscure drivers in windoze,,,,,,,

usually.

probably easily available with crapple if the bank account allows,,,,,,,,,,,

 

[Sidewinder]

USB to serial are no issue, well, the are as some software won't work with certain ones, but I have 4 now and that seems to work for the software I have so far.

Marvo, some of the software runs at such a low level, it simply can't communicate with the hardware from a VM.

I also have one of these:

http://www.brainboxes.com/product/pm-010/2-port-rs232-pcmcia-with-detachable-cables

& one of these:

http://www.brainboxes.com/product/pm-120/1-port-rs422-485-pcmcia-with-detachable-cable

Both of which work fine under anything newer than W2k, and I can get some software to run under VM's and use these.

They are not that expensive either really.

Steps,

Very little data, I was hoping to set up a data drive that I could use as a swap out partition, or use a USB stick fo transfer data, I have a tiny 8Gb USB that would do fine, would not need to move more than 8G's.

There must be a way of doing it surely?

No-one had any joy?

I was only going to load Linux to use the boot loader!

Stuck to only 1 disk as it would need to be in a laptop.

It would be DOS 6, Win95, 98, 2k, NT4, XP, & 7.

There would also be 4 versions of XP at least.

Thinking about a 750Gb or 1Tb disk.

DOS needs say 20MB, Win 95, 10GB, same with 98, 2k about the same, but could go to 20GB, XP say 40GB each, Win7 could have say 250GB, that only comes to 450GB.

Even with a 750 that leaves 400GB for data, that could be split up so that the dumb OS's could read it, admittedly getting data out of DOS would be fun!

I think I need to use an old lappy to try it.

 

[steptoe]

jeez,

I think your easy solution here is a pocket full of USB drives and a lappie set to boot from USB

can you install windows on a USB..?

I got a 64G one a while ago for 20£ -ish

 

[Andy™]

i have a HDD caddy for various drvies. one of them has XP on it for a few things that wont run on win 7. just push it in, switch on and done. PC is set to boot from HDD caddy first

 

[Sidewinder]

Andy,

We went down the road a while ago of using separate loose HDD's.

The thing with this is you need to carry un-protected hard disk drives around, also, the connectors that are fitted to disks are not designed to be made & broken, possibly several times per day.

Using a caddy on a factory floor is often not easy, laptop balanced on some obscure part of a machine threatening to fall on the floor at any second.

Plus no power supply for the caddy if needed, as there is no 230 plugs around, so you need to hack into the panel wiring, or have a good lappy battery anyway.

Steps,

I had thought about USB's but, the are slow!

There must be a solution that is reliable surely?

FFS it can't be that hard, can it?

 

[steptoe]

yes, usb can be slow, what class of drive have you used,?

there is a massive speed difference between a 'class4' [most common] and a 'class 10' [ massively faster]

I have a class 10 that streams films perfectly.

 

[Sidewinder]

WTF is Thunderbolt for a MAC?

I am now up to 6 laptops, with another having to come along soon by the looks of things.

Don't quite see how you get away with so, little hardware?

 

[Marvo]

Marvo, some of the software runs at such a low level, it simply can't communicate with the hardware from a VM.

Can you be more specific? When you say low level are you running in machine code or assembly.....? What hardware issues were you having with a VM?

 

[Sidewinder]

The new stuff as you say is OK via VM.

I can get most things to work with USB to serial, with the PCMCIA cards too.

As you say S5 is a biatch.

So I just keep the Siemens stuff all together on one machine, but I'm thinking that I could keep it on one partition with a boot manager.

Then the AB could go on another, the 5 flavours of BR stuff on separate machines, though perhaps these could be better as VM's so they don't need reboots all the time.

The trouble with the BR stuff is that it pushed the envelope a bit, so used some OS specific hooks and stuff, so it has limited OS's it will run on.

There are also a couple of systems & OS's that the disks I have are now damaged so I can't re-install them.

Marvo,

No I can't be more specific because I did not write the applications, but, I know from trying that they cannot access the physical hardware via a VM.

 

[Sidewinder]

Don't want to go down the route of separate loose disks if I can avoid it!

 

[steptoe]

there is,

I think, [now I think a bit more about it]

a way of making a machine think a HDD [if partitioned correctly] is in fact different discs,

I tried it once, but it was a bit techie for me so I gave up,

its a bit late now and Im twatted, but I'll have a skank around tomorrow and see if its a viable for you,

would prob still need re-boots though.

 

[Sidewinder]

Yes Steps it would need reboots to swap OS's on different bootable partitions on a single disk.

That IMHO is a better option than separate disks, especially if I can get one or two data partitions that are visible from the majority of the OS's, at the end of the day a single FAT16 data partition would probably be big enough in combination with a big USB, or say a FAT16, a FAT32 & an NTFS would suit, sizes would be the max for the 16 & 32 easily & 100GB for the NTFS would be OK.

 

[steptoe]

iirc sidey, you dont make them bootable partitions,

you have to keep changing boot order in bios in order to access the different OSs/'discs',

as in different windows partitions kept trying to overwrite each other on the same disc,

so you have to make it think it is different discs.

 

[Sidewinder]

No Steps, all the partitions with bootable Os's are bootsable.

You just have one primary boot partition with a boot manager on it that writes temporary boot code to the OS boot partition you want to activate.

I just thought that someone here would know a boot partition manager they could recommend!

 

[steptoe]

No Steps, all the partitions with bootable Os's are bootsable.

You just have one primary boot partition with a boot manager on it that writes temporary boot code to the OS boot partition you want to activate.

I just thought that someone here would know a boot partition manager they could recommend!

the trouble is with a partition manager - None of them work very well and some OS's don't like multiple partitions

It get s very complicated - headAche material

I dont do multi Boot Partitions after loosing partitions with partition magic (and thats one of the good ones!) years back - Not good - headache

thats the problem i had with windows,

it always tried to overwrite the other partitions, thus making them corrupt.

GRUB could see and boot them, but they wouldnt work, only the last installed windows worked, every time in any order.

 

[Marvo]

This was why I suggested rather persevere with the VM route, you'll be lucky to get 2 or 3 bootable partitions to play nicely on the same hard drive, with 8 or 9 that you envisaged I honestly think you've got very little chance. At best I'd say the swappable drive suggestion would be your only chance with that number of OS's. 

 

[Sidewinder]

The VM route is known not to work with many of the programmes.

The manufacturers can't do it so what hope have I!

I fail to see why a "partition manager" programme cannot be written that can do this reliably.

Swapping disks has been tried and can be done, but, they are too vulnerable IMHO to be carried around and swapped out all the time.

Plus the connections are not designed for that level of use, and the disks & MB's see unacceptably elevated failure rates.

Perhaps E-SATA could be something to investigate.

Lots on at the moment, I need to start prioritising!