Win-ME Dual Boot DOS

I have been at this problem for a solid two weeks, tried everything, and
got nowhere. It seems that you can set up a Dual or even Multi boot with
every Windows O/S product "except" Millennium Edition. You don't even have
the option to "Shutdown to Command Prompt" in any menu. I need to use the
drive for a straight DOS system - critical real time motor control - but
would like to use the system for normal Windows tasks at other times.

The literature offers Win-ME dual boot with "higher level products" like
NT and Win2000, but fails all attempts to keep DOS alive on the boot
partition. After ME is installed, the hard drive goes directly to Win-ME, or
if interrupted by (CTRL or F8), you get 3 options, all ending up in Win-ME
running - no more "Command Prompt Option" - as there used to be in Win-95 &
98, and as there is once again now, in Win-XP, (which is overkill for this
application, so I am staying with ME, if possible).

In fact, after installing ME following the DOS 6.22 install (as
required), the MSDOS.SYS has entries for MultiBoot=1, and has renamed IO.sys
and MSDOS.sys to .DOS files - just as it did in the old Win-98. It looks like
it is quite "prepared" to run the DOS and Win-ME options, but never does. I
tried to change the BootGui=1 to BootGui=0, so ME would not even launch, but
even that was ignored, and ME starts up anyway.

After about a dozen re-installs of DOS then ME, trying various tricks, I
even tried modifying the Config and Autoexec to create DOS and WINDOWS
"MenuItems" - but these DOS based prompt screens never showed up, almost as
though Win-ME "completely ignores" Config.Sys and Autoexec.Bat, as soon as it
has read what it needs for itself to run, from the new MSDOS.SYS file for
Windows ME version.

I also tried Partition Magic 8 (Boot Magic), which identifies the DOS and
Windows partitions, as one item "pair" - I suppose it expects them figure
things on their own, and to "Dual Boot" using Microsoft code, after PM8
simply launches code in the main partition. This again, ends up running
Win-ME, just as without PM8.

Please help: Has anyone out there managed to create a Dual Boot with
Win-ME and DOS? What is the secret? I have already searched the web, and
Microsoft Knowledge Base, without results.

Am I correct in thinking that Microsoft screwed this up in ME and failed
to fix it since XP was in the works? Seems to be very little reference at
all, to Win-ME anywhere on this website, compared to all the other O/S's.
Maybe they wanted us to get a life, and ditch DOS - but they had to relent in
releasing Win-XP.

Any help would be most appreciated.
--
Thanks