Unknown_K wrote:

DOS 3.3 or 5.0 depending on the speed of the 286 and if it has SCSI, IDE or an original MFM drive. DOS 6 is best for 386 systems and above that can use upper memory.

It's only a 8mhz 286, I'm going to try and use a scsi drive with it (I have a PC card drive and a pcmcia to compact flash adapter, providing the thing is bootable it should work). If that won't work, I'll have to see about getting an XT-IDE adapter or getting an old scsi drive. I haven't found any decent pricing on 3.5" scsi drives on ebay, though (that aren't ancient or way overkill for this machine).

DosFreak, I really like the look of that Fun500 (almost looks like Motif) and may give that a try, assuming I can get it to run on my machine.

Last time I used the FD installer was a rather horrible experience... I do hope they have changed it since the last version. If not, rolling your own DOS system is not such a bad idea after all 😉

How big is your harddrive? Maybe you could set up a minimal boot floppy with network drivers, grab the iso image with MTCP, mount a virtual CD using SHSUCDHD and install it that way. Just thinking out loud here, but it sounds really fun to me 🤣

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jwt27 wrote:

Last time I used the FD installer was a rather horrible experience... I do hope they have changed it since the last version. If not, rolling your own DOS system is not such a bad idea after all 😉

How big is your harddrive? Maybe you could set up a minimal boot floppy with network drivers, grab the iso image with MTCP, mount a virtual CD using SHSUCDHD and install it that way. Just thinking out loud here, but it sounds really fun to me 🤣

I've got a 2GB industrial grade compact flash card, I just have to get it working via the SCSI card somehow. If my idea of putting it in the PCMCIA adapter and then booting from that doesn't work, then I've got to order an old 1 or 2GB scsi hard disk somewhere and figure out a way to shoehorn it in.

http://www.freedos.org/download/

There's a floppy image at the bottom of the page. For the other utilities you'll have to figure out a way to copy them over if you need them.

IDE/SCSI HD connected to a newer computer and then install freedos on the drive, then attach it to the older computer?

Not sure if it's worth the trouble or not since more than likely you won't be using all those utilities.

Not sure how I missed the floppy link. Guess i didn't scroll down far enough (facepalm).

sliderider wrote:

GEM might actually be the way to go for a GUI for a 286 if all you will be using it for is file management and don't plan to run any apps. If GEM runs fine on a 8mhz 68000 Atari ST then it should be plenty speedy on any 286. Windows 3.x apps are pretty much useless now, anyway, so no real reason to use it over GEM.

GEM ran fine on our first XT (8MHz 8086, 640kB, floppy opnly).
(That probably was GEM/2.)

Of course GEM was only a graphical environment, not a OS.

Huzzah! Found this bad boy, will run on a 286 with 640k (German and English versions):

http://www.mevis-research.de/~ritter/awakeideas/desktop.html

Will have to give it a go but looks promising.

snorg wrote:

Huzzah! Found this bad boy, will run on a 286 with 640k (German and English versions):

http://www.mevis-research.de/~ritter/awakeideas/desktop.html

Will have to give it a go but looks promising.

Awesome. That looks like a solid and classic GUI for a 286.

I also put in a vote for MS DOS 7.10....yes real MS DOS 7.10, not FreeDOS, or anything like that.
This is the best DOS version ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SycWPBs6jI
I use a 80GB HDD for my dos rig using DOS 7.10 and it includes DOSSHELL, QBASIC, full MS DOS Help, etc, etc....it has all MS DOS components you'll ever need.

The only thing is I have never tried it on a 286. 386 is the oldest system I have tried it on.

Looks nice but I'm not brave enough to try it. I've only got 2 720k disks to work with (until I get my HD working).

retrofanatic wrote:

Awesome. That looks like a solid and classic GUI for a 286. […]
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snorg wrote:

Huzzah! Found this bad boy, will run on a 286 with 640k (German and English versions):

http://www.mevis-research.de/~ritter/awakeideas/desktop.html

Will have to give it a go but looks promising.

Awesome. That looks like a solid and classic GUI for a 286.

I also put in a vote for MS DOS 7.10....yes real MS DOS 7.10, not FreeDOS, or anything like that.
This is the best DOS version ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SycWPBs6jI
I use a 80GB HDD for my dos rig using DOS 7.10 and it includes DOSSHELL, QBASIC, full MS DOS Help, etc, etc....it has all MS DOS components you'll ever need.

The only thing is I have never tried it on a 286. 386 is the oldest system I have tried it on.

With MS-DOS 7.1 WIn 3.11 does not work properly (you can patch it, but some applications won't run) and you can forget about MS Network Client and use drive shares.

FreeDOS seems quite nice in freeing up low memory with xms and HMA enabled , don't see why you wouldn't use it.

vetz wrote:

With MS-DOS 7.1 WIn 3.11 does not work properly (you can patch it, but some applications won't run) and you can forget about MS Network Client and use drive shares.

IIRC WfW 3.11 only supported 386 enhanced mode, not standard mode, so it wouldn't run on a 286.
Of course if this holds true for Win 3.1 than you have a point.

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We used Win 3.1 on our 286, but that was a 20 MHz one. I can imagine that it is no fun with only 8 MHz.

snorg wrote:

So I went ahead and ended up getting something as close to my first PC as I could manage: a Tandy 1000 TX (I think I actually ha […]
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So I went ahead and ended up getting something as close to my first PC as I could manage: a Tandy 1000 TX (I think I actually had a 1000A or 1000SX but wanted something with a little more legroom and the TX seemed like better option as it was about the same price).

I'm going to try and see if I can get a full 1MB of RAM on it via an ISA expansion board. I may end up with closer to 900k, though, if I'm not able to find proper DRAM chips (there is a bank not populated).

I suspect the answer to my question is some version of DOS (pretty sure win 3.1 won't run and I can't find info on previous versions of OS/2 prior to v 2.0 as far as system requirements, and I know that OS/2 was pretty beefy w/ regard to system requirements. So I think those are right out.

I was thinking of maybe FreeDOS or Dr DOS, with an Open GEM shell? Is there any version of GEM that supports 256 color graphics?

I am most likely going to stick with the stock sound, but would like to see if I can get a VGA board of some type in there.

RE: OS/2 - 1.3 is the last version that supports the 286. The 286 was actually one of the many reasons Microsoft & IBM came to a divorce - Microsoft wanted to dump 286 support sooner than Big Blue (there's that famous quote of BillG saying the 286 was brain dead because it couldn't jump back to real mode once in protected mode and there was no V86 mode yet). IBM, which was pushing the PS/2s (several models of which were 286-based) and had made commitments to businesses regarding support, wasn't keen on the idea of orphaning the new machines.

OS/2 is perhaps one of the most "modern" operating systems one can run on a 286. I believe it's multithreaded in addition to being *mostly* protected mode (and of course GUI-driven). It did some interesting things on a 286 to make it more or less work - utilizing the undocumented LOADALL instruction to access memory without having to go into protected mode and (iirc) triple faulting the CPU to get around the lack of switching between real & protected modes. LOADALL would be brought to DOS with Microsoft's HIMEM driver (only when running on a 286 of course) - although I don't believe Microsoft documented it there either.

Unfortunately the list of hardware for OS/2 1.x leaves something to be desired: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/102628/en-us (KB102628: OS/2 1.3 Hardware Compatibility List) and you could probably count the # of OS/2 1.x 286 apps (that's what we have to call them now, right?) on one hand.

There's also the *nix variant Minix, which had a version that supported the 286 through 2.x - if you're in to that sort of thing: http://minix1.woodhull.com/hints.html#small

It runs on 286 very well.

I am very, very curious about that MS DOS 7.1 boot on a 286...!

All my 286s systems (Headland, C and T, Suntac... you name it) freeze in about 3 sec after reading the MS DOS 7.1 boot floppy.
What is the trick ?
Must MSDOS.SYS or IO.SYS be hacked in some way ?
Is the 286 BIOS the culprit - any 386 specific BIOS call /check at startup ? I have no idea.

Jolaes76 wrote:

I am very, very curious about that MS DOS 7.1 boot on a 286...! […]
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I am very, very curious about that MS DOS 7.1 boot on a 286...!

All my 286s systems (Headland, C and T, Suntac... you name it) freeze in about 3 sec after reading the MS DOS 7.1 boot floppy.
What is the trick ?
Must MSDOS.SYS or IO.SYS be hacked in some way ?
Is the 286 BIOS the culprit - any 386 specific BIOS call /check at startup ? I have no idea.

I came to this post when I was facing the same problem. My 286/10 also freezes during reading DOS 7.10 boot floppy. Anyone tried using 7.10 on a 286?