I\'m pretty new around here, but I thought I\'d start my posting by mentioning a method that I use to get around the dual-boot nightmare.

First off, I have to say that all my machines are old- some damn old with speeds typically around 500Mhz. It\'s with these old creakers that i experiment with various
Linux distros. Sometimes if I want to compare one with another on the same machine (or God forbid with M$) the usual method is to run a dual boot.

As we know, this isn\'t always easy and can be awkward to set up. There is another way.

Now, some of us use a separate HDD for each OS, right?
I prefer to do it this way, but keep them all separate. Not a new idea, but one that\'s effective. It works like this:
Two IDE drives are installed. Both are set as \'master\'. The BIOS is set to auto-detect or similar.  The IDE date cable runs to each drive as if they were chained (no reversal), BUT the power lines (+5v & +12v) are switched physically so that only one drive can be live at a time.
This means in practice that you can select which OS you use with a physical toggle switch. *THIS MUST BE DONE WHEN POWERED DOWN!*
What you do is shut down, flick the switch, then power up. The computer behaves as if it is a different machine from the one you were just using, different OS and all.
It\'s one sure way to be safe from accidental partition deletion/boot failure etc that can sometimes occur (at least with me) when trying to set up dual-boot on the same drive.


 Curiously, most motherboards seem to not realize that there is a \'dead\' drive attached to it under this arrangement. there are exceptions though. I have some Dell workstations that hate this and get totally confused if another hard drive is hung on the data cables. Technically, I presume that the Dell motherboard is intolerant of the reduced impedance of the data bus- but hey ho, not everything works in this world.

If you\'re into messing about with old computers, this seems a good method of trying out various OS\'s without upsetting your favorite setup too much.

-TP