stand-alone DOS from 98SE. FAT32 support is just great.

I use MS-DOS 6.22 on all my vintage boxes (except a Pentium 3 on which I use Windows 98 SE). All my vintage boxes have HDDs < 2GB and I only play MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 games. So MS-DOS 6.22 works perfectly for me. I got rid of my LAN (too many cables and drivers / utilities to load) and use CD-ROMs instead (and occasionally LapLink with FastLynx / INTERSVR/LNK). Each vintage box now has a CD-ROM drive installed. Windows 7 64BIT does not allow ARJ to be used so multiple diskette archives are no longer an option. I no longer have any Windows XP machines connected to the WWW: only Windows 7.

^ winrar handles arj just fine, even multivolume ones

rgart wrote:

Its easy to fill up a 2GB DOS partition but I don't find it an issue having a couple of them.
Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Indiana Jones, Lands of Lore are just a couple of CD's that will fill your 2GB.

Some of us don't do that virtual CD thing on period correct DOS systems 😀

leileilol wrote:

rgart wrote:

Its easy to fill up a 2GB DOS partition but I don't find it an issue having a couple of them.
Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Indiana Jones, Lands of Lore are just a couple of CD's that will fill your 2GB.

Some of us don't do that virtual CD thing on period correct DOS systems 😀

Just an xcopy /e. Some of us like things easily accessible, faster, with less loading time and without the need for CDROM drivers.

brostenen wrote:

Depends, if I take the word "Windows" it is a really broad terminoligy in the world of computers. ;-) Os/2 more stable than Wind […]
Show full quote

sliderider wrote:

OS/2. More stable than DOS or Windows.

Depends, if I take the word "Windows" it is a really broad terminoligy in the world of computers. 😉
Os/2 more stable than Windows, is only true up until WinXP/Win7. As my Win7 machine have
been running rock solid on the same install since 2010. 😁 Os/2 have never been able to do that. 🙁

My Windows7 machine is my "workhorse", not my hobbyist machine. I use it for homebanking, mail,
word processing and stuff that are related to modern day society. You know... Everyday stuff.

If you're running a DOS machine for games, you're probably running 3.1 or 9x. XP does not run well when you try using it with the minimum specs published by Microsoft. You really have to step up to a more powerful machine to get acceptable performance from XP.

Also, if you get a red box version of OS/2, it will work with whatever version of Windows you have installed. It doesn't have to have Windows built in.

sliderider wrote:

brostenen wrote:

Depends, if I take the word "Windows" it is a really broad terminoligy in the world of computers. ;-) Os/2 more stable than Wind […]
Show full quote

sliderider wrote:

OS/2. More stable than DOS or Windows.

Depends, if I take the word "Windows" it is a really broad terminoligy in the world of computers. 😉
Os/2 more stable than Windows, is only true up until WinXP/Win7. As my Win7 machine have
been running rock solid on the same install since 2010. 😁 Os/2 have never been able to do that. 🙁

My Windows7 machine is my "workhorse", not my hobbyist machine. I use it for homebanking, mail,
word processing and stuff that are related to modern day society. You know... Everyday stuff.

If you're running a DOS machine for games, you're probably running 3.1 or 9x. XP does not run well when you try using it with the minimum specs published by Microsoft. You really have to step up to a more powerful machine to get acceptable performance from XP.

Also, if you get a red box version of OS/2, it will work with whatever version of Windows you have installed. It doesn't have to have Windows built in.

I am not using any Windows on my DOS gaming rig.
Nor using Windows inside any operating systems.
I am only saying that if a DOS game can run without extra setup in win98 them fine.
If not. Then it is being played om my Ms-dos box.
I am more an os purist than aera purist guy.

rgart wrote:

leileilol wrote:

rgart wrote:

Its easy to fill up a 2GB DOS partition but I don't find it an issue having a couple of them.
Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Indiana Jones, Lands of Lore are just a couple of CD's that will fill your 2GB.

Some of us don't do that virtual CD thing on period correct DOS systems 😀

Just an xcopy /e. Some of us like things easily accessible, faster, with less loading time and without the need for CDROM drivers.

And some of us don't like to waste hard drive space so needlessly 😐

(Just try to play a game with CDA soundtrack only without the CD-ROM. And no modern ports, mods, GOG versions or ripping allowed, just the original, unmodified game files 😏 ).

This being Microsoft, there might be subtle incompatibilities in MS-DOS 7.x that make running MS-DOS programs targeted at earlier versions more difficult than it should be. Am I just being paranoid? Anyway I've always stuck with 6.22.

I use MS-DOS 6 or 6.2/6.22 with older systems (upto early 486) where the CHS boundary kicks in. In one system it is combined with Stacker 4.01.
I had also tried with Drive Overlays, but these seem to have issues with some setups. I had e.g. the case where it booted once after installation with Int13 extension and on a subsequent boot it just couldn't find itself anymore.
As a simple workaround I use SCSI with an own Controller BIOS. Most ISA controllers support between 1GB and 8 GB for SCSI.

If I have a newer system with drives > 8 GB I use DOS 7.1 with FAT32 on the DOS partition.

All systems have a CD-ROM and Ethernet, which makes it easy to exchange data. I use a Linux in a VM with a Samba server with lowest authentification setting that allows even the oldest DOS LAN Manager to access shares.

While it may be surprising to some perhaps, and while it generally received a poor public reception, Windows Me (and its subsequent 7.x version of DOS) has generally been the version of Windows/DOS that has worked the best and been the most versatile, for me. There are a couple of reasons why I primarily use Windows Me, although I do also have separate partitions for Windows 98 and Windows 98SE:

1. System Restore utility provides a way to easily bounce back from accidental system misconfigurations (can also use the SCANREG /RESTORE tool in Win98SE, to accomplish similar results).

2. Native support for USB 1.0. AFAIK, Windows 98 required vendor-specific USB drivers. Due to my own personal hardware preferences, I would rather not use an OS that is not USB-compatible or that predates the USB hardware standard.

3. Support for larger IDE hard drives. I have a 120GB hard drive installed on my classic gaming/MIDI rig, for example.

4. When paired together with System Commander 7 or higher's TrueDOS program, you can restore full Real-Mode DOS compatibility to Windows Me. Works like a charm 😀

My 386 / 386SX rigs -> MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 only (not active computers, just for nostalgia purposes)
My Pentium MMX and PIII rigs -> MS-DOS 6.22/Windows 3.11, Windows 95, and Windows 98 multiboot. (both active)

And no, I don't have any problem with 2GB MS-DOS partitions. During the times, my last MS-DOS machine had a 500MB HDD, and I never even had a greater than 2GB HDD until Windows 98 was the system of choice.

Both of the active rigs has a decent sized (72GB for MMX and 146GB for PIII) SCSI disk in them just for storage purposes (ISOs and zips of uninstalled apps/games) so only thing I need to do is boot from W98 partition and just copy anything you need to the 2GB DOS partition.

For extra data transfer purposes, all my rigs has external CF-IDE adapters, and W98 capable rigs have USB CF readers. I tried CDROM (too wasteful), ZIP drive (too slow), network (too much hassle) and floppy (yeah, right..) approaches before, for data transfer, but nothing beats CF to IDE adapter, IMHO.

MS-DOS 7.10 whenever possible. Better memory management out of the box, fat32 (useful for transferring stuff through USB flash drives), and a bunch of utilities that don't break LFNs.

alexanrs wrote:

MS-DOS 7.10 whenever possible. Better memory management out of the box, fat32 (useful for transferring stuff through USB flash drives), and a bunch of utilities that don't break LFNs.

+1 - I use DOS 7.10 for most of my 386, 486, P1, PII systems for some of the above-mentioned reasons.

But I do use multiple systems and I do have older DOS verisons (3.2 and 5.0) in use in some of my older 286 and Tandy 1000 systems due to the simple fact that they are not compatible with anything higher than 5.0 and I do like to have some systems on-hand that are running older DOS versions to tinker with.

I am trying to build some older Windows 2.0, IBM PC-DOS, and OS/2 systems as well.

And as Mau1wurf1977 mentioned earlier in this thread, I use DOS 6.22 for testing sometimes as I like the 'feel' of it as well.

In all my pre-Pentium II builds I only use DOS 6.22 and earlier. OK, apart from the really old stuff that can't run anything else, I am self-confined in FAT16 even on pc's capable of running win9x because I love using some utilities that can't handle anything more, eg. Norton Utilities.
The only issue I had with the 2GB limitation is that I don't like using my cd's, so I just make an image and use that instead. You can't fit a lot of full cd images though in 3-4 2GB partitions. I "solved" it by having a network card with packet drivers installed and whenever I feel like trying something new I just copy it via ftp. Sounds like a lot of hassle but it's not that much in reality, I'm only doing it every once in a while when I'm in the mood for that kind of things.
If it wasn't for my old utilities obsession I'd definitely be using a FAT32 capable DOS.

The 2GB limit does feel confining at times.

Generally when I setup a system I'll install DOS on a 2GB partition then install 98SE in the remaining space.

Then I setup 98 to display the boot menu where I can boot previous operating system. Having 98 available makes it easy to access the network to move file around when needed.

Suppose I could just boot 98 without the gui going into DOS 7 but doesn't feel right to me, feels dirty, knowing all the 9x stuff is lurking around on the file system.

I use dos6.22 on the 486 and a different boot with win95 on another partition.
Dos6 can have its own benefits to see if system runs stable.

I dual-boot DOS 6.22/Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and Windows 98 SE on a P3/600 machine. I have the 80 GB drive partitioned with a 2GB FAT16 primary partition (DOS 6/WfW 3.11) and the remaining space as an extended partition, with a single logical partition (Win98SE).

Meh I just prefer to use Windows 98SE for the most part. The only DOS machine I have currently is my IBM PCjr and that uses IBM DOS 2.1. 😜

King_Corduroy wrote:

Meh I just prefer to use Windows 98SE for the most part. The only DOS machine I have currently is my IBM PCjr and that uses IBM DOS 2.1. 😜

Yeah 95/98 is nice but sometimes you need to boot pure DOS.

Also for low RAM 486 and 386 class systems will not run 9x satisfactorily