my pick is DOS 7.xx from win95c and later. it has advantages with regards to fat32 filesystem and memory management. fat32 give you drive partitions greater than 2gb. the himem.sys that come with these later dos supports XMS v3.x specs, meaning it can use more than 64mb ram. i don't see any speed advantages though.

My favourite is DOS 6.22. DOS 5 was good enough for memory managent to load it high, but 6.22 is like, more refined a bit.
I stay away form anything higher than 6.22 though, for compatibility sake. Soundblaster's AWE32 dos install program can't run under Dos 7, if I'm not mistaken. And I also avoid it (Dos 7+) to prevent unexplained crashes and other weird problems while playing a dos game.

Interesting. DOS 7 + DOS games = unstable?
Win 9x DOS does give you lots of extra goodies. Perhaps the odd crash, it's worth the extra aggravation?! 🤣

Using IBM DOS 7 here aka PC-DOS 2000

Much more memory efficient than MS-DOS 6.x

+1 for msdos 6.22 for the coolness factor.
Usually you can get a nice combo by dualbooting msdos622 and some win9x.

I have never really needed to revert back to Dos 6.22 since version 7.xx came preinstalled with windows in 1995.
Indeed the creative driver-installer refused to run in 7.10. But that check seems to only be there to make things unnecessarily difficult, as the drivers run fine, and the installers runs fine too when fooled with 'setver'.

DOS 6.22 for me. Most compatible, period.

I've found DOS 7.x to be more than adequate for me. The convenience of FAT32 support is a really big plus. I imagine there are lots of old old games that don't like it tho.

My fav thing about DOS 6 is the thorough help system it has. I used to just sit around and read through that back in the day.

swaaye wrote:

My fav thing about DOS 6 is the thorough help system it has. I used to just sit around and read through that back in the day.

Makes good reading today! 😉

Amigaz wrote:

Using IBM DOS 7 here aka PC-DOS 2000

Much more memory efficient than MS-DOS 6.x

ofcourse, that is the right choise for a DOS only machine!!!! 😁
on my K6II and p200mmx I have installed win98SE and made it boot to DOS by default... mainly for FAT32 support....

keropi wrote:

Amigaz wrote:

Using IBM DOS 7 here aka PC-DOS 2000

Much more memory efficient than MS-DOS 6.x

ofcourse, that is the right choise for a DOS only machine!!!! 😁
on my K6II and p200mmx I have installed win98SE and made it boot to DOS by default... mainly for FAT32 support....

hehe, you were my "sensei" when it came to this 😁

Amigaz wrote:

Using IBM DOS 7 here aka PC-DOS 2000

Much more memory efficient than MS-DOS 6.x

Have you used UMBPCI.SYS, 386MAX, EMM386 or any other memory manager with PC-DOS? I'd like to know how compatible it is.

Anyway, with DOS 6.22, I have no problem getting 622K - 626K of conventional memory by tweaking it just right, depending on the motherboard.

valnar wrote:

Amigaz wrote:

Using IBM DOS 7 here aka PC-DOS 2000

Much more memory efficient than MS-DOS 6.x

Have you used UMBPCI.SYS, 386MAX, EMM386 or any other memory manager with PC-DOS? I'd like to know how compatible it is.

Anyway, with DOS 6.22, I have no problem getting 622K - 626K of conventional memory by tweaking it just right, depending on the motherboard.

Not using any at the moment since I have enough free conv. memory already since the system stuff is much smaller in PC-DOS and it can be loaded into UMB with DOS DATA=UMB in config.sys
And since I'm mostly running EISA 486 system my conv. memory isn't hogged down with system rom's etc
I don't think QEMM is compatible with PC-DOS

*quote*I've found DOS 7.x to be more than adequate for me. The convenience of FAT32 support is a really big plus*quote* it is actually possible to install a NTFS drive on MS-DOS 6.22, if previously configured.. just as it is on Linux... 😉