If you are worried about people turned off, I'd go for 1. People buying retro machines probably know how to install an old Dos OS but might still be turned on by these two preinstalled.

Why are you using a boot manager to dual boot between 6.22 and 9x? 9x allows you to do this natively. Just install DOS 6.22 first and then 9x. You will then be able to choose your OS from the boot menu. The boot drive will need to be FAT16.

collector wrote:

Why are you using a boot manager to dual boot between 6.22 and 9x? 9x allows you to do this natively. Just install DOS 6.22 first and then 9x. You will then be able to choose your OS from the boot menu. The boot drive will need to be FAT16.

I second that.. That's the best option. I got one dos-dedicated pc, I installed dos 6.22, then 98se on top of it, and it works fine, and you only need fat16 on the boot drive, as collector suggested. You can dual boot great with this config. 😀

keep this in mind from ms website

If you upgrade to Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows Me or if you reinstall Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows Me, Setup deletes certain files in your MS-DOS folder and replaces them with the Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows Me version of the files in the Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows Me folder and in the Command folder. The following files are deleted and replaced by Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows Me Setup:

Ansi.sys
Attrib.sys
Chkdsk.exe
Choice.com
Country.sys
Dblspace.bin
Dblspace.exe
Dblspace.sys
Debug.exe
Defrag.exe
Deltree.exe
Diskcopy.exe
Display.sys
Doskey.com
Drvspace.bin
Drvspace.exe
Edit.com
Edit.hlp
Ega.cpi
Emm386.exe
Fc.exe
Fdisk.exe
Find.exe
Format.com
Help.com
Keyb.com
Keyboard.sys
Label.exe
Mem.exe
Mode.com
More.com
Move.exe
Mscdex.exe
Msd.exe
Networks.txt
Nlsfunc.exe
Os2.txt
Ramdrive.sys
Readme.txt
Scandisk.exe
Scandisk.ini
Server.exe
Share.exe
Smartdrv.exe
Sort.exe
Start.exe
Subst.exe
Subst.exe
Sys.com
Xcopy.exe

Not if you choose the previous version of ms-dos option when you install windows on top of dos - it asks you for that during installation. That way you keep all of your old dos 6.22 files. Then you can boot with f8 and select "previous version of ms-dos". And you got a full-fledged dos 6.22 with all of its files intact. 😉

Exactly. You can even dual boot Win3x and 98. The trick is to not upgrade, but to do a new install. You will be able to load 6.22, Win3x, DOS7, Win98 on the same machine. Win3x will not load on DOS7x.

So that means , you can start by installing MS DOS 6.22 and then install Windows 3.11 on a 4 gigabytes big part, and then install Windows 98 SE, and if you really want to go "crazy" then you can always install Windows XP on a secondary harddisk on the side 😀

Win3x will not load on DOS7x.

I *think* I remember being able to run Win3x on Dos7.x...
Also with Dos 6.22 you are limited to Fat16 which also limits the partition size to 2GB if I'm not mistaken (at least with Dos 6.22, NT and DR-Dos are supposedly able to handle 4GB partitions).

3xStart.exe
http://oldfiles.org.uk/powerload/win3x.htm

WolverineDK wrote:

So that means , you can start by installing MS DOS 6.22 and then install Windows 3.11 on a 4 gigabytes big part, and then install Windows 98 SE, and if you really want to go "crazy" then you can always install Windows XP on a secondary harddisk on the side

For 6.22, as Dominus posted, you would have to limit the boot drive to 2GB, formated in FAT16. Win98 would allow you to have larger FAT 32 partitions, but not the boot drive.

DosFreak wrote:

3xStart.exe
http://oldfiles.org.uk/powerload/win3x.htm

Suspended account.

collector wrote:

DosFreak wrote:

3xStart.exe
http://oldfiles.org.uk/powerload/win3x.htm

Suspended account.

Works for me. Seems 3.x ran under Win95a, but not OSR2 - at least not without that patch.

Seems 3.x ran under Win95a, but not OSR2

That could be what I'm remembering. During 95a I did use both Windows and around OSR2 I did switch completely (backed my Windows 3.11 installation up, and only dug it out two years ago and could almost use it out of the backup with Dosbox 😀).

Everyone,

Thank you for all of your suggestions!

I went ahead and, as a lot of you suggested, went with dual-booting DOS 6.22 and Windows 98SE; making a bootable Ghost image disk for each system. Hopefully I'll FINALLY be able to get these up on Ebay within the next couple of weeks now that I have the Gravis Ultrasounds, Nero 5.5, and OEM copies of the OSes I was going to sell with each one.