I use a floppy and a program I got from the NetBSD.org site.  I seem to 
recall the program is called dosboot.

My system also has two disks.  The first is 2  GB and has Win95 (don't 
ask).  The second disk is also 2 GB and has NetBSD-1.3.1.

The floppy is a Win95 DOS boot disk made by formatting with system files 
from a right click on the A: icon from Win95.  The only things on it 
besides the files created by the formatting process are an autoexec.bat and 
the dosboot program.

The way it works is:

1) Boot sequence in BIOS is set for A:, C:, etc

2) The disk in A: boots to basic, nothing special DOS with no CDROM 
drivers, sound card drivers, etc.

3) The autoexec.bat runs the dosboot program with command line options that 
tell it where to find the NetBSD boot program on the second disk.

The beauty of this setup is that the real kernel is on the hard drive, not 
the boot floppy; therefore, it loads faster than truly "booting from 
floppy."  Also, since I haven't done diddle to the MBR of the first disk, 
Win95 can't get hosed.  If you play with LILO or other boot-loaders, make 
sure you back up your drive.  I've toasted more than one disk that way..... 
         :(

NOTE:
  This works for me because the SCSI board I'm using has a BIOS that allows 
the PC to boot from SCSI disks.  If your second disk is SCSI but your first 
is IDE, your mileage will definitely vary, else it may vary.


On Thursday, September 24, 1998 10:03 PM, strawberry@toth.org.uk 
[SMTP:strawberry@toth.org.uk] wrote:
> I have two hard disks. The first is about 196 Megabytes, is the bootable
> disk and has Windows '95 on it (argh, but there we are). The second disk
> is 1523 Megabytes and has two partitions, both FAT. If I installed
> NetBSD/i386 on the second partition of the second disk. What's the
> easiest way to boot into NetBSD on this partition.
>
> Additional problem: I have an old BIOS which only sees the first 512
> Megabytes of the second disk but I have a small program that appears on
> startup called EZ-Boot and allows any operating systems loaded after
> this small program to access the whole of the second disk, I think this
> small program may be located in the boot blocks of one of the disks
> which is a problem for a bootblock resident bootloader.
>
> Is there any way to boot NetBSD from the second partition? I know it's
> possible to install it there, and once it's on there I can mount it
> using the install floppy so the whole of the second drive is accessible
> to NetBSD.
>
> What's the least painful way of booting NetBSD?
>
>    Thanks in advance
>
>               Chrissy Lloyd
>
>