help! install with DOS-lost HD on boot

[kaynjay@igalaxy.net]

Home with the school computer for summer... I wanted to redo my drive layout
due to very limited space, squeezing out OS/2 and Windows for Linux.  I've
lost my Linux drives, though.  I am hoping someone could point out where I
screwed up, and suggest a way to avoid reinstalling (or doing it right ;).

After backing up critical files to a new-but-old 430 Mb HD (hdb), I wiped all
partitions on hda, created a 100 Mb fat DOS partition, 2 primaries for root
and swap, then 3 logicals on the rest of hda for /var, /home, and /usr. 
Install of 2.1 went well from CD.  Set up LILO as my boot manager.  

Rebooted to a DOS floppy to check, and then format C (it saw the partition as
90 Mb instead of 100--did I choose the wrong fs type?).  Booted into Linux.
Untarred the old DOS system onto the "C" partition, modified lilo.conf, and
ran lilo.  This led to the inability to boot DOS ("non-system disk or disk
error" ... or whatever it was).  

Using cfdisk I reset both hda1 and hda2 as bootable (1st-->DOS, 2nd-->Debian)
and wrote to disk.  Re-read error reported by cfdisk.  Reboot led to an
inability to boot LILO at all.  

An old Linux rescue disk taught me to make a new one at some future point :(
I didn't realize it was "set" to another partition, and I don't know how to
change that.. ).

A DOS floppy allowed me to again reformat the C drive, install DOS/Win31 for
my kids' games, and boot directly to DOS.  But I'd like to get the drive back
to Linux control without a reinstall, if possible.

Can I make a rescue floppy from the DOS partition, using the CD and skipping
all other installation steps?  Can someone let me know what step I would take
to get this working afterwards?  

Thanks for any help!!

Kenward Vaughan

(currently on my other machine :)
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kaynjay@igalaxy.net
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