Keep Dos 7.1 from win98se. I have not come across 1 game that doesn't work in 7.1 but does in 6.22. Fat32 is much more usefull, also dos7.1 supports int13 Extentions so is limited by bios hd support (up to 2 TB).

Having MS-DOS 6.22 is more than a practical decision.
It's about nostalgia and the original DOS experience.
You know, using the old utilities. Norton Utilities (Symantec), GEOS/Win3, PC-Tools (Central Point), all the stuff that comes with MS-DOS 6.xx ..

For bare gaming, DOS 7.x is good enough, I think. Don't worry.

I think hardware will be a far bigger issue when it comes to compatibility. I don't think that troubleshooting games in DOS 6 vs 7 would be a good use of your time.

To DOS 7.x, the only big problems I can think of would be those Software Toolworks game releases ~1993 where they *demand* you to "have your dos disks ready".

Jo22 wrote on 2022-11-12, 22:46:

Having MS-DOS 6.22 is more than a practical decision. It's about nostalgia and the original DOS experience. You know, using the […]
Show full quote

Having MS-DOS 6.22 is more than a practical decision.
It's about nostalgia and the original DOS experience.
You know, using the old utilities. Norton Utilities (Symantec), GEOS/Win3, PC-Tools (Central Point), all the stuff that comes with MS-DOS 6.xx ..

For bare gaming, DOS 7.x is good enough, I think. Don't worry.

I found MS-DOS 5 much more nostalgic as it came with my first PC in early 1992. Come to think of it dos 6.22 was short lived and released quite late, April 1994. Win95 OSR2 with DOS 7.1 was released in August 1996. Not much time between the two. FAT32 and better DOS memory management with no drawbacks.

Just for the sake of "correctness", i have DOS 6.22 on my "non-windows 9x" machines. But at the same time, i do replace EDIT, EMM386 and HIMEM.SYS from Win98SE into my dos installation. I see those utilities as "updates" just like windows has updates. 😜

Riikcakirds wrote on 2022-11-13, 15:02:

Jo22 wrote on 2022-11-12, 22:46:

Having MS-DOS 6.22 is more than a practical decision. It's about nostalgia and the original DOS experience. You know, using the […]
Show full quote

Having MS-DOS 6.22 is more than a practical decision.
It's about nostalgia and the original DOS experience.
You know, using the old utilities. Norton Utilities (Symantec), GEOS/Win3, PC-Tools (Central Point), all the stuff that comes with MS-DOS 6.xx ..

For bare gaming, DOS 7.x is good enough, I think. Don't worry.

I found MS-DOS 5 much more nostalgic as it came with my first PC in early 1992. Come to think of it dos 6.22 was short lived and released quite late, April 1994. Win95 OSR2 with DOS 7.1 was released in August 1996. Not much time between the two. FAT32 and better DOS memory management with no drawbacks.

Actually, I never really used MS-DOS 6.22 in the 90s. My father had a late '93 issue of 6.20 instead, which I used.
Also he had MS-DOS 3.20, 5.0a, 6.0 etc I think. And a 1987 copy of PC-DOS 3.30, which I have a soft spot for.
It was so ancient and mysthical.. And had that awesome manual with the parrot and those illustrations! Loved reading it! 😁

GigAHerZ wrote on 2022-11-13, 15:07:

Just for the sake of "correctness", i have DOS 6.22 on my "non-windows 9x" machines. But at the same time, i do replace EDIT, EMM386 and HIMEM.SYS from Win98SE into my dos installation. I see those utilities as "updates" just like windows has updates. 😜

Exactly the same.
Only compatibility issue I would have is Dos 7 needs patching if you want to install Windows 3x
but I also install Dos 6.22 on my pure dos rigs for full nostalgic effect I've never had to do this and anything with Win95 or up installed I've no wish to install 3x

Jo22 wrote on 2022-11-13, 15:46:

Actually, I never really used MS-DOS 6.22 in the 90s. My father had a late '93 issue of 6.20 instead, which I used.

Same here: Still got 6.20 (directly from Microsoft) and 5.0 (licensed by Eten); once had 3.30 that came with DTK 386DX20 but those disks got infested by fungus. 😿

I am on DOS 7.1 side.
I have multiple memory configurations menu in my CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT so I can boot in PureDOS or Win98SE at boot.
So pure nostalgic is here.
It's better to have Win98SE to use USB sticks or CF cards for files transfers.
As my machine is Pentium 166Mhz, I could use Windows games too.

This has been discussed before.

See DOS 6.x / DOS 7.x / Win98SE Command Prompt Differences

DOS 6.22 and Windows 98 SE Multi Install

Football Pro 96 - Dosbox or Dos?

Are there any games that are incompatible with newer versions of DOS?

TLDR: DOS 7.x is as compatible as Microsoft managed to make it. DOS compatibility was very important at the time. Nothing is absolutley 100% backward compatible, even DOS 6.22, 5.00, etc , but hitting such an issue is unlikely (and if it is a popular game, a patch/workaround likely exists). I have seen more issues with FreeDOS than with DOS 7.1 .

Yes, DOS 7.x wasn't bad. It added a few new DOS API functions, also.
Back in the Windows 98SE days, DOS 7.x was enough for me. This was before I felt nostalgic for old PCs. They were still around/common at the time.

It also ran my copy of Windows 3.10 (non-WfW) just fine back then.
It was installed in a separate directory on the C: drive of my Windows 98 PC (C:\WIN31 or C:\Windows.31 ?) .
But I must add I wasn't dependent on 386 Enhanced-Mode very much, also.
Because, that stuff usually ran on Windows 98SE, anyway. So no need for Win32s, WinG etc. Windows 98SE took care of that.

My old, beloved 16-Bit applications, like Visual Basic 1.0, Turbo Pascal for Windows etc. were both 286 friendly and Standard-Mode friendly, anyway.

But maybe I was a special case. Many users seem to have preferably used the newer WfW 3.11 instead, which uses VFAT and requires a 386+ PC.
The Standard-Mode kernal (DOSX.EXE+KRNL286.EXE) is nolonger part of it, thus.

Which is bad, because both FreeDOS and DOS 7 have no issues with Standard-Mode and vanilla Windows 3.1x.
On top of this, the old 286 code has less trouble with modern and fast CPUs.
Maybe that's another reason why I had never encountered trouble with the little Windows 3.1 installation on my Windows 98 PC.

Thanks a lot for all the responses.
Apologies Darry, I tried to find some info on the topic here, but it seems I didn't try hard enough 😳

I've been playing around since I wrote this post; everything I tried worked perfectly fine in the Win98SE DOS. Hence, I'm on the boat of using 6.22 for nostalgic reasons, but sticking to 7.1 from the pragmatic point of view.
In any case, I already installed 6.22 alongside Win 3.11 in a CF card using an IDE adapter in two different machines I'm building.

kahuna wrote on 2022-11-22, 08:24:

Thanks a lot for all the responses. Apologies Darry, I tried to find some info on the topic here, but it seems I didn't try hard […]
Show full quote

Thanks a lot for all the responses.
Apologies Darry, I tried to find some info on the topic here, but it seems I didn't try hard enough 😳

I've been playing around since I wrote this post; everything I tried worked perfectly fine in the Win98SE DOS. Hence, I'm on the boat of using 6.22 for nostalgic reasons, but sticking to 7.1 from the pragmatic point of view.
In any case, I already installed 6.22 alongside Win 3.11 in a CF card using an IDE adapter in two different machines I'm building.

No need to apologize, some of this is much easier to find if one already knows it exists because one was a participant in the thread.

Running one OS per drive (or CF card) is a good approach, IMHO.