Readme for fips20.exe

FIPS is the First nondestructive Interactive Partition Splitting
Program.  It is used to reduce the size of an MS-DOS or Windows (**)
partition, creating a new primary partition.  The new partition created
by FIPS can be deleted and the space reused to create the additional
partitions.  Normally this is needed when Windows has been installed on
a partition using all of a large hard disk, and you want to reclaim
some part of the hard disk to make additional partitions for Minix,
Linux, or other operating systems. 

[** Note: FIPS cannot split a partition formatted with a Windows NT file
system, it works only with MS-DOS, or Windows 95 or 98 partitions.]

FIPS version 2.0, released May 11, 1998, is the first official release
of FIPS supporting the MS Windows FAT32 file system.  It was downloaded
to minix1.hampshire.edu and thompson.oit.umass.edu on March 13, 1999
from the FIPS home page at http://www.igd.fhg.de/~aschaefe/fips/.

To decide whether you need this version of FIPS, within Windows open My
Computer or Windows Explorer and right-click on the partition you want
to modify, normally your C: drive.  The General Tab will tell you what
kind of file system you have.

Note that as of this writing the available Minix tools for accessing
files on an MS-DOS or Windows file system do not work with the Windows
FAT32 system.  The standard dosdir/read/write utilities also don't work
with FAT16 systems larger than a few hundred (?) Mbytes.  So you may
find it desirable to either reformat and reinstall Windows on a smaller
FAT16 partition or to make an additional small Windows FAT16 partition
to use as a transfer area for files you want to move between Windows
and Minix.

Please be sure to read the documentation files included in the FIPS zip
file.  This is a potentially dangerous application, and backing up your
files is recommended.

More information on FIPS and how it works is available in an article by
Vince Veselosky, "Windows/Linux Dual Boot" starting on page 34 of the
April 1999 issue of _Linux Journal_.  Most of what is said about
dual-booting Windows and Linux also applies to dual booting Windows and
Minix.

asw 13 March 1999