What machine will it run on?

Personally the real dilemma is between 6.22 and 7.1 (the one that comes with Windows). I'm still torn but working on a long-term test build using 7.1 on a 30GB FAT 32 partition. I have accumulated so many Games that FAT16 of 6.22 is really a limitation.

Worst is that while you can have 4 FAT16 partitions, these can't be read on a Windows PC when you plug the drive in. Linux can though...

I tried FreeDOS a few years back and a few games crashed so that was that 😀

bucket wrote:

Strictly speaking from a software (specifically, gaming) compatibility standpoint, is there a particular reason to run 6.22? I'm thinking that there isn't, and it would make more sense to run the lighter 5.0 instead.

As far as I remember, 6.0+ yielded "significantly" more free conventional RAM (plus built-in CONFIG.SYS menu), so the choice was obvious (6.22). That's what I run.

Every time I tried switching to 7.0+ I had issues (can't remember what though:) so I don't recommend that. One thing is that you wouldn't be able to run Norton Disk Doctor/SpeedDisk, and would have to resort to use the awful MS Scandisk/Defrag.

FreeDOS is very-very incompatible, and its utilities are downright bad.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

What machine will it run on?

For the sake of argument: a machine not powerful enough to run Win9x.

="Gambucino"]As far as I remember, 6.0+ yielded "significantly" more free conventional RAM

Really? It uses less RAM than 5.0? That's unexpected.

bucket wrote:

Really? It uses less RAM than 5.0? That's unexpected.

I think it was the smaller memory footprint of HIMEM.SYS.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

What machine will it run on?

Personally the real dilemma is between 6.22 and 7.1 (the one that comes with Windows). I'm still torn but working on a long-term test build using 7.1 on a 30GB FAT 32 partition. I have accumulated so many Games that FAT16 of 6.22 is really a limitation.

After using DOS fron 98SE with FAT32 partitions for serveral years now, I can assure you there are not problems whatsoever. Currently all my builds from 386 to p1 use FAT32 and the only thing that needed patching was win3x. Games no matter how old never complained about the filesystem 😉
It's totally worth it, a 20GB single partition on a 386DX? It's just great! 😊

That's great to hear Keropi!

Yea I just added all the GOG.com games (whenever they release a "new" DOS game I buy it) and 2GB simply isn't enough. Especially with my Pentium machine as I can cover a very wide range of games from Space Quest 1 to Space Quest 6 which has full speech and everything.

I never played with Win95 DOS much. But I do remember that for some strange reason the intro to Syndicate Plus wouldn't run when you started the game, and I could never figure out why. It ran perfectly fine on DOS 6.x.

I believe I purchased the GOG.com version of Syndicate. Might give it a try!

Ok I tried the GOG.com version of Syndicate (is that Syndicate Plus?).

Works fine (just had to create a synd.bat file and copy paste what was in the AUTOEXEC section of the GOG.com DOSBox config file in order to get Sound going).

Intro plays and the game runs also...

1. DOS 6.22 supports multiple boot configuration (MultiConfig) blocks in the config.sys file.
2. More conventional memory can be squeezed out in DOS 6.22 compared to DOS 5.0, iirc.
3. DOS 6.22 Supplementation Disk is available to bring back the omitted DOSSHELL.
4. Comes with DEFRAG and SCANDISK.
5. DOS 6.22 comes with newer versions of all essential programs - himem.sys, emm386.exe, smartdrv.exe, etc.
6. Process autoexec.bat and config.sys during boot for step-processing each command, after pressing F8.
7. Other minor enhancements of how certain programs and commands function like certain features in COPY, XCOPY, ouput formatting of certain internal commands like MEM, DIR ,etc.
8. MEMMAKER for better memory management. I still use it. It's pretty good (with it's drawbacks).
(And I also still manually optimize TSRs and control what loads where in the conventional and UMB blocks if needed in certain builds.)

I don't use either the doublespace or drvspace.

The thing is that MS-DOS 5.0 was a HUGE leap over the previous versions and revolutionized many aspects.

But DOS 6, especially DOS 6.22 polished it well.

It is basically an improved DOS 5.0 in all aspects, and there is no need to revert back to 5. (Unless of course DOS 6.22 is not available.)

I agree with Malik. The one machine I use DOS 5 on is my Tandy 1000TX. But that's limited to 640K conventional memory, so I really want the smallest DOS possible. I'd use DOS 3.3, but it only supports 32mb partitions. But if you have the RAM, run DOS6 and put it in high memory.

I seem to recall (probably from a page on mdgx.com) that the HIMEM and EMM386 replacements in FreeDOS allow for even more conventional memory than MS-DOS 6.22 can provide. I'm kind of hazy on the details, though. I wish the documentation wasn't such an unsightly mess.

On my quite optimized FreeDOS system, using UMBPCI and XMGR, I have 630k conventional free on boot with everything loaded (even unnecessary things like 4DOS and NANSI). I don't think MS-DOS can beat that.

edit: Just checked, it's 627k now. Still, haven't had any programs complaining so far.

^ a nice feat but it can be achieved with some tweaking on a "real" DOS system too and without compatibility compromises (like SHSUCDX etc) and with 120kb of umbs free to use for other stuff , here is my p1 machine:

might not be 645.000 free conventional bytes but I don't know anything that needs that amount

Oooh nice, didn't know that was possible. I see MSDOS is using only 16k (FreeDOS: 11k), so the difference is not that big then.
You can even squeeze out 1k more by replacing HIMEM with XMGR 😉

edit: And another K by replacing COMMAND by 4DOS. I see Microsoft's command.com uses even more than 4DOS (272b).

@jwt27

yeah it can be done 😁 provided you use a newer mobo that UMBPCI works with... else for 386/486 mobos there is TheLastByte manager for UMBs , it works with similar results... maybe a little less memory left due to the nature of the boards.
I once tried squeezing more free mem with alternative managers/drivers but had some game incompatibilities so I resulted to the normal ones... the only thing that hasn't failed me yet from 3rd party drivers is CTMOUSE, it's just awesome!

... And here on my MMX system I have only 475 kb free (DOS 7) 🤣 Just MSCDEX, CTCM, CTmouse and some Voodoo enviroment variables load at startup. Any tips to free up more mem?

Wow that sounds very much like my Pentium machines 😀

I'll post my MS-DOS 7.1 config files in a minute...

SET SOUND=C:\SB16
REM SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H5 P300 E620 T6
SET CTCM=C:\CTCM
C:\SB16\AWEUTIL /S
C:\SB16\MIXERSET /P /Q
SET PATH=C:\DOS
LH C:\DOS\DOSKEY.COM
LH C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /V /D:CDROM001 /L:D
LH C:\DRIVERS\LOGI730\CLOAKING.EXE
LH C:\DRIVERS\LOGI730\MOUSE.EXE

DEVICE=C:\CTCM\CTCM.EXE
LASTDRIVE=Z
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS /TESTMEM:OFF
DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE RAM
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\DRIVERS\CDROM\CDROMDRV.SYS /D:CDROM001 /P:170,0F,M
FILES=40

It would be interesting to see what are clogging so much of the conventional mem. And perhaps some solution to maximize the ever-elusive 640kb conventional memory, in itself will be like playing a game, and when successfully able to maximize it, will provide an immense gratification, not unlike winning an adventure game without using any hint.

EDIT : A description or a listing of how much each program takes up the memory and where it resides will be useful. (mem/c command and if relevant, the mem/f to see the blocks.)