Having multiple OS's is tricky. It took me a while before I got what I wanted, but now that I found a way to bend the rules I have Mandrake 8.2, XP-pro, Win2k, Win98se, Win3.1, Dos6.22 all running on my P4.
I have an unusual scenario that works for me: I have 4 hard-drives. 3 are Windows flavors (FAT, FAT32, NTFS) and connected to a Siig PCI drive controller which is assigned as the primary boot device in bios (by default).
I have a dedicated Linux drive connected to IDE-1 on the Mainboard with a couple of cdrw/dvd drives on IDE-2.
I use System Commander 2000 (commercial) to select amongst the Win/dos OS's.
I can boot the Linux drive directly (bypassing Sys Cmdr) by pressing the Escape key at a particular moment on bootup. This brings up a bios menu with choices to boot from: cdrom(s) or Mainboard IDE drives as alternatives to the Siig. I can choose cdrom for Linux install, and then the hard-drive number for Linux later after it is installed.
I use Lilo to boot Mandrake 8.2 on the Linux drive and it is installed to the MBR for that drive. I used the cdrom boot-install (A boot drive option on the bios menu obtained by the Escape key.) to install Mandrake. When I boot in this manner the drives connected to the Siig are invisible to Linux, so the HD connected to the Mainboard IDE-1 appears as the only drive to Linux and this makes it work for the install of Mandrake/Lilo, and for booting it up later.
I used Partition Magic 8 to create formatted partions for Mandrake before the install. It was easy to just select the partions for \, \usr, \home, etc and just install. PM8 is an awesome product. The only downside is that you have to install Windows, then PM8, then you can create a bootable floppy with PM8 that allows you to partition outside of the restraints of Windows. I recommend not trying to format from within Windows, boot from the PM8 floppies instead.
This is probably the strangest of PC setups, but it works for me.
You can email me directly if you run into questions while attempting to create your multi-OS PC and I'll try to help. I have been down that road, and I know where it leads...
Now I just need to get my hands on the Mandrake 10.1 PowerPack Plus (eval cackle)
-matt
