ground zero

[William P. Bergstrom]

Greetings: I would like to tap into the vast resourse of experienced opinions out there! :-D   When I finished typing I realized that this post was getting big, so thought I'd better put the main question up at the top.   I need to know the best way to partition my two drives to have a debian-win98 machine.   I have a pent 200mmx machine 64 mb RAM  running win 98 on a quantum bigfoot 1.2 gig disk (partiontioned to 4 equal logical).   = I pationtioned this drive for data-app segregation, and easier defragging.  Now Im thinking that splitting the drive in half and using       FAT32 might be better.= I've been interested in Linux and got CD's for Debian and OpenLinux.   I just bought a 13 gig quantum fireball, and want to set up my machine/drives to run both (Debian-Win98) OS's. I've been bone-ing up on the online installation manual for Debian and Hardware HOWTO's. Seems  like partitioning disks is critical to the  whole process.  In the debian users archive list, I've read about installing win 98 first then debian- lilo. So----  the ground zero newbie question is:  I'm ready to WIPE my 1.2 gig drive and install it as the master on my motherboards secondary controller and set my CD-Rom as slave. Then install the 13 gig as master by itself on the primary controller. Then install debian and win98.  (btw 1.2 is dma33 and 13 is udma66, Motherboard has dma33 controllers.  ) What about partions? I know that the linux bootstrap loader has to load within the 1st 1024 cylinders, won't win98 fight over this? Yes my motherboard will alow me to boot from CD-ROM.  What about my thoughts for drive configuration? Help! Any and all advice would be greatly apreciated! Bill