Question about partitioning

[Ed Burke <burke@netgate.net>]

         Hi Gang,
            I have reconsidered installing linux - now that I have all
my ducks in a row.
   I had NT installed on an ex-corporate machine.  So there were a lot
of nifty programs
  but no meat behind them.  I opted to discard this and install W 95
instead.  I now have
  it installed on 1.25 Gb of a 2Gb disk.  I figured I would install the
linux on the remaining
  disk space.  It says I have .98Gb of available space on drive D, drive
C has W95.
         A slight aside here but W95 left me with only 100Mb out of
1.25Gb.  Is that right?

I'm wondering if I need to partition or can I just install right to the
available drive D?

      there is one folder on D, and it is labled games, I could care
less about these.   So I
presume I can over-write what ever is there.  Or maybe I should format D
so there is
nothing on it.

              Ah ha,   I just remembered the second ?, your
documentation says that the OS
needs to be loaded in the first 1024  cylinders.   What does this mean
if I have a split
drive how do I know which is the first 1024 cylinders?  It sounds as if
I should format
the entire hard drive, assign the linux partitions, then reinstall W95
when I'm done.

     Is any of this making sense?  Thanks in advance ofr your help.  Ed
Burke