Yes. Some titles just don't work well under Win9x DOS mode.

Some of which are?

I would also be interested in knowing what these games are that require MS-DOS 6.22 and will not work in Windows 98 DOS mode.

Even if you need MS-DOS for some reason, it is trivial to use a boot floppy.

appiah4 wrote:

Is there any practical reason to dual boot MSDOS and Win98?

No, there is not.

I have MS-DOS 6.22/WfW 3.11 on one drive and Windows 98SE on a SCSI drive... but I am also crazy

You can always just turn off - boot to GUI in Win98 and then have a boot menu set up through Config.sys and Autoexec.bat.

One or more items for DOS (depending on the games, sound card(s), etc.) and then have one for Windows.

Kinda tricky to set up if you have never done it before, but that is how I always did it way back in the day.

Another bid for the boot menu. Much simpler than partitioning. You just have to remember to turn off the read-only flag on MSDOS.SYS.

gdjacobs wrote:

Yes. Some titles just don't work well under Win9x DOS mode.

I have not seen one game not running with MS-DOS 7.1

PRACTICAL? Son, you have over 200 posts here, I think you've gotten a feel for VOGONS.

The one thing NOBODY HERE is, is practical. In the name of retro computing collecting, the PRACTICAL option is to throw out all of the old computers and use emulators and hypervisors. THAT is the reasonable, practical
option here.

Of course, if you want to dual boot, Windows 98 and DOS (Use PC-DOS 2000, it's the best retro DOS, ignore that 7.1 CDU crap, it's rubbish) DO IT!

Even if there isn't a reason, do it anyways. Unless you have piles of computers and parts to go through, geeky extensions like these to projects make my day. I had a blast toying around with operating systems I had never used on my 486.

I've often considered a super multi boot including PC-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, NT3.1, NT3.5, NT 3.51, NT 4, NT 5, and WinME. It would be stupid, annoying, unnecessary, but it would be bloody cool.

No, throwing an old computer to run games on emulators on newer ones is not practical either for retro computing (on PCs, I don't really use other retro computers than PCs so I can't speak for them). Maybe the early to mid MS-DOS era games are working great, but emulating the late DOS games and win 9x games is not an easy task. And even if you manage to do it, often you won't get the best performance.

I never managed to run carmageddon on DOSBox without glide. And with a modded dosbox to support glide, the game ran pretty badly, way worse that on my pentium 2. And 3D accelerated games on windows 9x are even worse.

And running windows 9x games natively under modern windows might work right after some tweaking using patches, but some of them don't get patched after all these years so basically you're screwed and other times, the patch doesn't work right or doesn't work at all.
If I have time to lose on how to fix some problems on old games, I'd rather use it to build a retro PC from the late 90s/early 2000s that will run all these games just right and some will run better than on these emulators.

Sure there might be some exceptions, some stuff that I didn't look into, but the overall feel I have on retro computing is that if you just want to run just a few old games, then using emulators/patches should be a good option. But if you want to run tens or even hundreds of games, then building a retro PC will be a munch better option, especially if you want to run them at their best potential (graphic-wise and sound-wise)

Deksor wrote:

I never managed to run carmageddon on DOSBox without glide. And with a modded dosbox to support glide, the game ran pretty badly, way worse that on my pentium 2.

That's pretty much how they sell it on GOG and Steam, though.

And running windows 9x games natively under modern windows might work right after some tweaking using patches, but some of them don't get patched after all these years so basically you're screwed and other times, the patch doesn't work right or doesn't work at all.

Seems it's getting better all the time.

But if you want to run tens or even hundreds of games

I reckon anyone who starts building retro PCs will quickly find himself or herself without the free time to run tens or even hundreds of games.

Sure it's getting better, but it's still really far from perfect.

Also, yeah running hundreds of games will not be something easy to do for the average person, but if you built your computer to last a few years, the games that you'll play on it will probably change as some of them once they're finished aren't as fun to play, so "tens of games" sure is possible to do over the years except if you really like 5 games that don't get boring the 30th time you play them. Sure there are games that I'll still play years after years, but I won't play only them

DOS and Win98 on the same box, probably not unless you want to fool around with DOS oddments that don't play nice with Windows, but that's mostly weird system-level stuff.

OS/2 or Windows NT with Win98, though, that I could see.

Ampera wrote:

I've often considered a super multi boot including PC-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, NT3.1, NT3.5, NT 3.51, NT 4, NT 5, and WinME. It would be stupid, annoying, unnecessary, but it would be bloody cool.

I did that something similar in the past, taken apart for other builds last year or so. It was my fist retro build, even before I'm introduced myself to vogons. If I remember correctly:

MS-DOS 6.22 + Windows 3.11
MS-DOS 5.00 + Windows 3.1
MS-DOS 6.22 + Windows 3.11/Calmira II
MS-DOS 6.22 + Desqview
MS-DOS 7.1
FreeDOS
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows 98 Revolution Pack 9
Windows NT 4.0
Windows 2000
Windows XP
OS2 Warp 4
BeOS

It was a coppermine 1000 build with Voodoo2 SLI + Matrox Mil II + Voodoo3 AGP

Multiple partitions on 8 total disks (5 of them SCSI), complicated mess of mutiboot utilities and BIOS boot selection (even a boot floppy in case of BEOS). It was great fun fiddling with it 🤣

Although I'm not going into that kind of an exaggerated mess anymore, multiboot is always something I love (look at my signature) 🤣