My usual thing is my personal custom install (this is for 386+ machines):

MS-DOS 7.1

DOS folder with all the usual utilities and stuff, plus:
FDISK from FreeDOS (appears identical, but less limited than original FDISK)
JEMMEX
CTMOUSE

CONFIG.SYS with a menu containing various memory management combinations, but the default is JEMMEX since it's best for pure DOS

Plus I will usually install network drivers for whatever network card I have in the system.

PROGRAMS directory:
MTCP (absolute necessity for basic networking stuff, you can shell or FTP into other computers to do things and transfer files)
LINKS (the best DOS web browser for 386+ computers)
ARACHNE (sometimes... it's fun to play with)
MPXPLAY (a necessity for playing music or other audio files... playing MP3 files needs at least a DX4)
various other programs I might install such as MS Word 5.5, or Word Perfect 6.2, the only WYSIWYG word processor for DOS!

GAMES directory:
various games, the staples being all the Commander Keen episodes and fangames, Jazz Jackrabbit, Tyrian, Hocus Pocus, Epic Pinball

If I'm installing WFW 3.11 I'll copy over all the necessary drivers and my WFW311 directory which contains all the install files. I don't want to have to bother with swapping floppy disks. Then add an entry to the CONFIG.SYS menu for starting Windows with or without networking support.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2020-05-19, 15:50:

My usual thing is my personal custom install (this is for 386+ machines): […]
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My usual thing is my personal custom install (this is for 386+ machines):

MS-DOS 7.1

DOS folder with all the usual utilities and stuff, plus:
FDISK from FreeDOS (appears identical, but less limited than original FDISK)
JEMMEX
CTMOUSE

CONFIG.SYS with a menu containing various memory management combinations, but the default is JEMMEX since it's best for pure DOS

Plus I will usually install network drivers for whatever network card I have in the system.

PROGRAMS directory:
MTCP (absolute necessity for basic networking stuff, you can shell or FTP into other computers to do things and transfer files)
LINKS (the best DOS web browser for 386+ computers)
ARACHNE (sometimes... it's fun to play with)
MPXPLAY (a necessity for playing music or other audio files... playing MP3 files needs at least a DX4)
various other programs I might install such as MS Word 5.5, or Word Perfect 6.2, the only WYSIWYG word processor for DOS!

GAMES directory:
various games, the staples being all the Commander Keen episodes and fangames, Jazz Jackrabbit, Tyrian, Hocus Pocus, Epic Pinball

If I'm installing WFW 3.11 I'll copy over all the necessary drivers and my WFW311 directory which contains all the install files. I don't want to have to bother with swapping floppy disks. Then add an entry to the CONFIG.SYS menu for starting Windows with or without networking support.

Ahh yes, DOS 7.1 I didn't think to give that one a go.
Thanks for the tips!

Most dos tweaking "fun" is trying to free up as much conventional memory as possible, we even have a whole thread on it
Dos 6 conventional memory tricks

I mostly just loosely follow http://www.mdgx.com/mem6.htm or http://www.mdgx.com/mem7.htm

For system management I usually "cheat" and do this in windows (its about the only reason to install Win 3x anyway)
On a pre dos 7 PC I'll also have
Dosshell and Xtree Gold for system management
Dos 7's edit.com as it more then 1 file open a at a time
Norton utilities, mainly for Disk doctor and Speed disk which are better then MS versions

chinny22 wrote on 2020-05-20, 10:43:

Most dos tweaking "fun" is trying to free up as much conventional memory as possible, we even have a whole thread on it Dos 6 co […]
Show full quote

Most dos tweaking "fun" is trying to free up as much conventional memory as possible, we even have a whole thread on it
Dos 6 conventional memory tricks

I mostly just loosely follow http://www.mdgx.com/mem6.htm or http://www.mdgx.com/mem7.htm

For system management I usually "cheat" and do this in windows (its about the only reason to install Win 3x anyway)
On a pre dos 7 PC I'll also have
Dosshell and Xtree Gold for system management
Dos 7's edit.com as it more then 1 file open a at a time
Norton utilities, mainly for Disk doctor and Speed disk which are better then MS versions

Nice!, I like the sound of having edit.com use more than one file at once. handy when comparing config files etc.
Sounds like I've got some reading to do

Interesting! I have DOS 6.22 in my 486 build, just like the one I had back in the day, maybe this time with more cache, etc.
I tried DOS 7 a few months back, if I remember correctly, the boot message was something like Starting Windows 9x (which turned me off a little). Was I installing the correct version?
The other thing was that some programs didn't recognize it as DOS but as a Windows something, so they didn't run.
I didn't care much about this so I went back to 6.22.
Anyway, if some DOS programs are going to have issues with it, I'm not interested.
Was I missing something? did I installed the wrong version? I think it was an extracted DOS version from a Windows 9x CD. Is there another way to do it?
Thanks!

Dusko wrote on 2021-10-31, 18:07:

Interesting! I have DOS 6.22 in my 486 build, just like the one I had back in the day, maybe this time with more cache, etc. I […]
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Interesting! I have DOS 6.22 in my 486 build, just like the one I had back in the day, maybe this time with more cache, etc.
I tried DOS 7 a few months back, if I remember correctly, the boot message was something like Starting Windows 9x (which turned me off a little). Was I installing the correct version?
The other thing was that some programs didn't recognize it as DOS but as a Windows something, so they didn't run.
I didn't care much about this so I went back to 6.22.
Anyway, if some DOS programs are going to have issues with it, I'm not interested.
Was I missing something? did I installed the wrong version? I think it was an extracted DOS version from a Windows 9x CD. Is there another way to do it?
Thanks!

It's normal that MS-DOS 7.x says Windows because it was never stand alone like older versions. Most of the incompatibilities are centered around the DOS version check (SETVER can be used as a workaround) and use of environment variables such as winbootdir. Additionally in 7.1 due to the use of FAT32 partition issues can arise when using Windows 3.x and direct disk access.

If one only play DOS games, many of them will work fine as it was with MS-DOS 6.22.

If you were getting the full logo screen "starting windows 9x" with the clouds you can hide this by editing msdos.sys and changing the line Logo=0
I think a hacked version of MS Dos 7 exists that also changes the line of text from starting Windows 9x to Starting MS Dos 7. But this isn't official, as Gmlb256 said 6.22 is the last official stand alone version.

Most people don't really need a full install of dos. easiest way I've found to "install dos 7" is use a Win9x boot disk to format c:/s
Copy the c:\windows\command folder from 9x to c:\dos on your pure dos PC. even then you may never need 1/2 the files that live in there.

Only software I use that doesn't like Dos 7 Creative drivers which have Win95 dos mode replacements and Norton Utilities which also have newer dos mode replacements in one of their Win95 editions.

With all that said on my pure dos 486 I don't need fat 32 so run Dos 6.22, it just looks nice seeing starting MS Dos at boot and feels more correct pairing with Windows 3.11

Thank you Gmlb256 and chinny22.

Yes, I feel the same way having a more correct version of DOS, for me, that's the idea, otherwise I wouldn't be building these computers. I'm happy with DOS 6.22 with all its pros and cons.
For the convenience of more advanced DOS functionalities, I would use freeDOS instead, but again, that's not the point for me.

Thanks!