What does MS Dos ^.22 do that 7.1 can not do?

I don't know... I am here to hear/read some pros and cons for/against each of them.

13 years ago, when Windows 98 had just gone end-of-life, some vogons'ers discussed its DOS (7.1) vs 6.22.

It's a nice read! How (in)compatible MS-DOS 7 is?

Thx... I will read it...

Lazar81 wrote:

Why should one consider staying with 7.1 when 6.22 does the job so well?

No one should. Who even ever said that? MS-DOS 7.x is not a stand-alone product and should not be used as such. It was heavily patched to support Win9x. If you are not running Win9x, you should not run MS-DOS 7.x either.

I agree, and the fact that most ppl that tend to go with 7.0/7.1 do so with the FAT32 option in mind. Against which I only have one argument: "Do you really need that much storage for your DOS games and applications that one or two 2GB partitions wouldn't be enough?"

It was heavily modified to accompany Win9x, therefore I am not surprised that some memory managers and/or drivers are not cooperating nicely with it. There ought to be some pointy corners somewhere.

jaZz_KCS wrote:

I agree, and the fact that most ppl that tend to go with 7.0/7.1 do so with the FAT32 option in mind. Against which I only have one argument: "Do you really need that much storage for your DOS games and applications that one or two 2GB partitions wouldn't be enough?"

That depends on which period you are thinking about. For late 90s DOS games, a large collection can easily surpass the 8GB total hard drive limit of DOS6. Although you can install multiple drives, but why?

With that said, a late 90s PC might be useful for playing some early Win9x games, so you might as well be running Win9x anyways.

jaZz_KCS wrote:

I am not surprised that some memory managers and/or drivers are not cooperating nicely with it. There ought to be some pointy corners somewhere.

I don't think there are any. DOS 7's incompatibility with stuff is just an urban myth spread frequently without much to back it up.

jaZz_KCS wrote:

I agree, and the fact that most ppl that tend to go with 7.0/7.1 do so with the FAT32 option in mind. Against which I only have one argument: "Do you really need that much storage for your DOS games and applications that one or two 2GB partitions wouldn't be enough?"

I'll take small cluster fat32 over large cluster fat16!

I just tested a few combinations...
Dos 7.1 with xmgr+umbpci - I can't get it to work....
Dos7.1 with original memory manager and modern drivers (ctmouse, shsucdx....) results 615kb... Almost every game is running well.

Dos6.22 with xmgr+umbpci and modern drivers results 619kb and almost every game is running...
Dos 6.22 with original memory manager and modern drivers results 616kb and EVERY game is running...
At the moment I would prefer 6.22

If they are speed sensitive I run them in dosbox.

I'm often using MS-DOS 6.2x because it comes with useful utilities and wasn't so much targeted on 32-Bit yet.
Similar to DOS 5, it was tested -and actually used- on several 16-Bit machines of the time.
That includes various oddball machines based around 808x, 8018x, 80286 and the NEC V CPUs of the day.
Anyway, I'm not saying v7 is "bad". Rather the opposite (remember, "don't trust any DOS below 7").
There's Novell DOS 7, PC-DOS 7, Caldera DOS 7.. 😉

I use open sourced and public domain UMM03 + HIMEM.SYS on Win98SE DOS (4.10.2222) and I have 628KB.
The FAT32 smaller cluster size for bigger volume is useful in reducing disk slack space.

kjliew wrote:

I use open sourced and public domain UMM03 + HIMEM.SYS on Win98SE DOS (4.10.2222) and I have 628KB.
The FAT32 smaller cluster size for bigger volume is useful in reducing disk slack space.

What is UMM03?

Prepare to burn me at the stake, On my Pentium 90 I'm running DOS 7.1 with the latest version of QEMM.

and I like it.

I'm using DOS 7.1 with JEMMEX usually, and it works great. I can get ~630K free memory.

Lazar81 wrote:

I just tested a few combinations... Dos 7.1 with xmgr+umbpci - I can't get it to work.... Dos7.1 with original memory manager […]
Show full quote

I just tested a few combinations...
Dos 7.1 with xmgr+umbpci - I can't get it to work....
Dos7.1 with original memory manager and modern drivers (ctmouse, shsucdx....) results 615kb... Almost every game is running well.

Dos6.22 with xmgr+umbpci and modern drivers results 619kb and almost every game is running...
Dos 6.22 with original memory manager and modern drivers results 616kb and EVERY game is running...
At the moment I would prefer 6.22

If they are speed sensitive I run them in dosbox.

I use the CDU distro of DOS 7 with UMBPCI extensively, it works perfectly. No idea what xmgr is

Lazar81 wrote:

I just tested a few combinations... Dos 7.1 with xmgr+umbpci - I can't get it to work.... Dos7.1 with original memory manager […]
Show full quote

I just tested a few combinations...
Dos 7.1 with xmgr+umbpci - I can't get it to work....
Dos7.1 with original memory manager and modern drivers (ctmouse, shsucdx....) results 615kb... Almost every game is running well.

Dos6.22 with xmgr+umbpci and modern drivers results 619kb and almost every game is running...
Dos 6.22 with original memory manager and modern drivers results 616kb and EVERY game is running...
At the moment I would prefer 6.22

If they are speed sensitive I run them in dosbox.

Would you do us the kindness and please specify, when you say "almost every game is running" - which games are NOT running? And whether they are not running because of DOS version or because of choice of drivers / memory managers?

dr_st wrote:

jaZz_KCS wrote:

I am not surprised that some memory managers and/or drivers are not cooperating nicely with it. There ought to be some pointy corners somewhere.

I don't think there are any. DOS 7's incompatibility with stuff is just an urban myth spread frequently without much to back it up.

The fact that he has problems emerging when switching from DOS6 to DOS7 without any other changes surely proofs otherwise. Not necessarily memory manager incompatibilities, but others.

dr_st wrote:

Would you do us the kindness and please specify, when you say "almost every game is running" - which games are NOT running? And whether they are not running because of DOS version or because of choice of drivers / memory managers?

Lotus III - Not working with every memory manager in DOS 6.22, yet not tested in 7.1
Dune 2 - runs perfectly in 6.22 with umbpci and original memory managers. It refuses to startup in 7.1
Beneath a Steel Sky - not working with every memory manager in 6.22 as well as in 7.1

Just examples... Didn't test all my games yet.

maxtherabbit wrote:

I use the CDU distro of DOS 7 with UMBPCI extensively, it works perfectly. No idea what xmgr is

Ok... I will have a look. Can anyone say more on this?

Lazar81 wrote:

Lotus III - Not working with every memory manager in DOS 6.22, yet not tested in 7.1

Dune 2 runs perfectly on my retro machine with DOS 7.1 (Windows 98SE) and UMBPCI in pure DOS mode.

It also runs perfectly with EMM386.EXE for that matter.