Obviously no "real" serial ports exist anymore on modern systems.

There are serial and parallel port cards for PCIe, some have DOS drivers.
Important thing is to make sure that the port addresses can be mapped to "legacy" ranges.
Serial port FiFos are generally a super set of 16550AF, with a compatibility mode.
Parallel ports are more trickier to convince to be available at 3BCh, 378h, 278h etc.
A closer look at the supplied DOS drivers might be necessary here.

Edit: Just checked. The StarTech/Moschip MCS988xx has DOS drivers for LPT/COM.
https://www.startech.com/en-us/cards-adapters/pci2s550

PCIe variants (DOS drivers not always mentioned, but may exist inside ZIP file).
https://www.startech.com/en-us/cards-adapters/pex2s553lp
https://www.startech.com/en-us/cards-adapters/pex2s1p553b

These are just examples, though, not meant as a buyer's recommendation.
Please also double check if DOS drivers are available for both serial/parallel if its a combo card.

Just stay away from FreeDOS. Its fdisk utility is outright dangerous. It ended up deleting partition from wrong hard drive (with my full Windows XP installation I spent days setting up) despite the right hard drive being selected. It configured the 2nd hard drive as expected, but as a side effect destroyed everything else on the 1st one as well. I will better not write what I think of author of this tool.

FreeDOS has been a big waste of my time and never again.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-03-06, 17:48:

FreeDOS has been a big waste of my time and never again.

FreeDOS at its heart isn't that bad, I think.
But sometimes I think the authors of the utilities are, um, reserved and solitary.
They appear to be old, outdated in their thinking. As if they were like age 50+ pensioners or something. And that's confusing, unsexy.

When I was young, MS-DOS 5/6 were fresh and so were the developers.
Utilities like PC-Tools looked polished, had good manuals and were user friendly.

But when I'm using FreeDOS or the utilities supplied, I feel like I've met a gang of seniors, along with their catheters.
Not sure how to explain. The manuals (readme files) are way different to what I was used to in my shareware days in the 90s.
The FreeDOS Setup now is "okay" but it's missing something certain, not sure how to explain.

The FreeDOS documentation is dry, without any humor. Like a Linux project.
A far cry from the funny DOS times when authors used "cardware" model and asked for a nice postcard in return.

It's not my taste simply. That robotic, scientific kind of way of these know-it-all modern day DOS devs.
I want to remember the DOS platform as fresh, dynamic and crazy as it was (to me).
When people were young and relaxed, less being strict ("accurate"), when they wrote their own silly programs.

Edit: I also don't like their focus on C /C++ language.
To me, DOS life was all about QuickBasic and Turbo Pascal, with fine programs being writting with Turbo Vision.
I understand that FreeDOS itself is C based, but I don't like to have all free utilities written in it.
It again reminds be of Unix/Linux, just like the folder structure that FreeDOS uses by default.

Edit: In other words, I kind of feel that FreeDOS lacks "warmth".
I also think that C programmers tend to lack social skills more than Basic or Pascal programmers do.
It's probably because of the cryptic C language that authors programming in C
have unlearned how to write in whole sentences and how to write friendly readme files.
Or maybe it's also a generational thing, not sure. Mentality has changed in 30 years, maybe.

PS: I really like that FreeDOS mascot, that whale. ^^

Jo22 wrote on 2025-03-06, 18:18:

Edit: I also don't like their focus on C /C++ language. To me, DOS life was all about QuickBasic and Turbo Pascal, with fine pro […]
Show full quote

Edit: I also don't like their focus on C /C++ language.
To me, DOS life was all about QuickBasic and Turbo Pascal, with fine programs being writting with Turbo Vision.
I understand that FreeDOS itself is C based, but I don't like to have all free utilities written in it.
It again reminds be of Unix/Linux, just like the folder structure that FreeDOS uses by default.

Edit: In other words, I kind of feel that FreeDOS lacks "warmth".
I also think that C programmers tend to lack social skills more than Basic or Pascal programmers do.
It's probably because of the cryptic C language that authors programming in C
have unlearned how to write in whole sentences and how to write friendly readme files.
Or maybe it's also a generational thing, not sure. Mentality has changed in 30 years, maybe.

I'm sorry, but what on earth does the language that the commands and utilities are written in have anything to do with your use of the system at a user level?

I also think that C programmers tend to lack social skills more than Basic or Pascal programmers do.

That's one of the most bizarre statements I think I've ever read on this forum!

megatron-uk wrote on 2025-03-06, 19:02:

I'm sorry, but what on earth does the language that the commands and utilities are written in have anything to do with your use of the system at a user level?

It matters to me. I don’t want to ruin my positive memories of DOS by using modern minimalist utilities written by grumpy old men.
I don’t want to poison my character, loose my optimism by doing so.
Maybe that's highly emotional reasoning, but that's just me.
I won't discourage others using them, though.
If someone needs a modern DOS utility, I'll point to FreeDOS ones and let them decide on their own if it suits them.
I have no hard feelings againt FreeDOS utility writers whatsoever.
I just don't share their mindset. When it comes to DOS, I'm happily remaining in the 90s.

megatron-uk wrote on 2025-03-06, 19:02:

I also think that C programmers tend to lack social skills more than Basic or Pascal programmers do.

That's one of the most bizarre statements I think I've ever read on this forum!

But question is, is it really wrong?
To my observation, C/C++ programmers tend to be ambitious like fighter jet pilots.
They want to optimize code, they don't leave notes in their C code etc.
Meanwhile, Basic and Pascal programmers are more problem-oriented.
They also often use IDEs with on-line help, which gives advices.
The typical C programmer uses a text editor and a command line compiler/linker like Power C.

Edit: Or let's put it this way: What on earth went wrong on the author's side that he/she decides to program in C/C++, -on DOS-, out of all languages?
I wonder if there's a relationship to cognitive peculiarities or something.

Edit: Or let me describe it this way.
Way back in the 90s, you had shareware/freeware/public domain authors who either began their readme files with "Hey there!", "Thank you for trying out my program" or other friendly greetings (cool speak in demo sceene).
People back then either were overly happy or polite, in short.

But what's left of this today? Exactly. FreeDOS utilities or modern day utilities in general look like they were written by a senior teacher.
They lack warmth. The human factor. The readme files don’t explain the inner workings of the programs in human readable form or what the original motivation was to write them.

Way back in the 90s, the authors not seldomly did that. They wrote a litlle essay, an introduction.
But the FreeDOS guys? They had 30 years to polish FreeDOS or to write nice readmes, to document the source code in great detail.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-03-06, 17:48:

Just stay away from FreeDOS. Its fdisk utility is outright dangerous. It ended up deleting partition from wrong hard drive (with my full Windows XP installation I spent days setting up) despite the right hard drive being selected. It configured the 2nd hard drive as expected, but as a side effect destroyed everything else on the 1st one as well. I will better not write what I think of author of this tool.

Because MS's fdisk, in its infinite dangerous-less-ness, is well-known not to destroy anything. /s
I mean, it almost-literally writes random data at random sectors during the "checking integrity" phase.............
And the entire reason things like "protective MBR" are a thing. The entire world adapts around the damage it causes.

I don't know what damage FD's FDISK caused you, but it for sure it will be insignificant compared to the damage MS's FDISK will cause just by reading a disk with e.g. wrong geometry. (And the reason I still rely on physically unplugging disks some times...).
Say what you want, but one thing I liked about UNIX-like is that at least they won't try to randomly write to disks you do not want it to write to. (I get very annoyed when e.g. Linux "desktops" do).

javispedro1 wrote on 2025-03-06, 20:08:

Because MS's fdisk, in its infinite dangerous-less-ness, is well-known not to destroy anything. /s I mean, it almost-literall […]
Show full quote

Because MS's fdisk, in its infinite dangerous-less-ness, is well-known not to destroy anything. /s
I mean, it almost-literally writes random data at random sectors during the "checking integrity" phase.............
And the entire reason things like "protective MBR" are a thing. The entire world adapts around the damage it causes.

I don't know what damage FD's FDISK caused you, but it for sure it will be insignificant compared to the damage MS's FDISK will cause just by reading a disk with e.g. wrong geometry. (And the reason I still rely on physically unplugging disks some times...).
Say what you want, but one thing I liked about UNIX-like is that at least they won't try to randomly write to disks you do not want it to write to. (I get very annoyed when e.g. Linux "desktops" do).

Microsoft's fdisk is well known to be dangerous for modern hardware. I expected better from FreeDOS, but no it's the same. I find it shocking as I would have expected FreeDOS to be used alongside modern OSes on separate disks.

The damage it caused was deletion of a partition on an unselected hard drive. It did what I asked from it on the selected hard drive, it's just that it had a mind of its own to do more than I asked. It never happened to me with partitioner in Windows, Partition Magic or other similar tools.

Fortunately it's about 20 hours of reinstallation needed with very little game progress as the installation was only about 3 weeks old. This should be a word of warning to anyone who intends to use FreeDOS in a multi boot setup. They could end up losing more precious data.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-03-06, 20:33:

The damage it caused was deletion of a partition on an unselected hard drive.

For the record that ("deletion of a partition" likely just involves the MBR) is trivially recoverable with some utilities such as testdisk .....
However the when MS's FDISK writes over random sectors, that is usually *NOT* recoverable.
*Any* data loss warning that you give about FD applies to regular DOS, multiplied by 10. To even boot DOS when you have a precious partition sitting around is playing roulette, and if you believe that DOS (or a random DOS app) won't access a disk because it's not even MBR formatted -- wishful thinking.

You can usually recognize whether a disk has been accessed by win9x at all because of how it destroys the disk ID and other fields in the MBR -- and that defines the level I expect from MS.

Not to mention FD issues, once reported, usually are fixed -- DOS' ones are obviously not.
In fact, FD (or its ecosystem of drivers) is many times the only way to boot DOS-like on any computer less than 5-10 years old or enjoy 'fancy' features such as EMS/XMS on it.
FD has compatibility issues and significant bloat but you get the advantages of using a system that someone still cares about improving.
I cannot advise to blindly discount it specially when talking about "modern PC" usage.

Jo22 wrote on 2025-03-06, 19:17:

It matters to me. I don’t want to ruin my positive memories of DOS by using modern minimalist utilities written by grumpy old me […]
Show full quote

megatron-uk wrote on 2025-03-06, 19:02:

I'm sorry, but what on earth does the language that the commands and utilities are written in have anything to do with your use of the system at a user level?

It matters to me. I don’t want to ruin my positive memories of DOS by using modern minimalist utilities written by grumpy old men.
I don’t want to poison my character, loose my optimism by doing so.
Maybe that's highly emotional reasoning, but that's just me.
I won't discourage others using them, though.
If someone needs a modern DOS utility, I'll point to FreeDOS ones and let them decide on their own if it suits them.
I have no hard feelings againt FreeDOS utility writers whatsoever.
I just don't share their mindset. When it comes to DOS, I'm happily remaining in the 90s.

megatron-uk wrote on 2025-03-06, 19:02:

I also think that C programmers tend to lack social skills more than Basic or Pascal programmers do.

That's one of the most bizarre statements I think I've ever read on this forum!

But question is, is it really wrong?
To my observation, C/C++ programmers tend to be ambitious like fighter jet pilots.
They want to optimize code, they don't leave notes in their C code etc.
Meanwhile, Basic and Pascal programmers are more problem-oriented.
They also often use IDEs with on-line help, which gives advices.
The typical C programmer uses a text editor and a command line compiler/linker like Power C.

Edit: Or let's put it this way: What on earth went wrong on the author's side that he/she decides to program in C/C++, -on DOS-, out of all languages?
I wonder if there's a relationship to cognitive peculiarities or something.

Edit: Or let me describe it this way.
Way back in the 90s, you had shareware/freeware/public domain authors who either began their readme files with "Hey there!", "Thank you for trying out my program" or other friendly greetings (cool speak in demo sceene).
People back then either were overly happy or polite, in short.

But what's left of this today? Exactly. FreeDOS utilities or modern day utilities in general look like they were written by a senior teacher.
They lack warmth. The human factor. The readme files don’t explain the inner workings of the programs in human readable form or what the original motivation was to write them.

Way back in the 90s, the authors not seldomly did that. They wrote a litlle essay, an introduction.
But the FreeDOS guys? They had 30 years to polish FreeDOS or to write nice readmes, to document the source code in great detail.

I'm sorry but this is a load of nonsense.

There is no way, other than to disassemble the .com or .exe to "feel" what the language was that it was written in.

If the inputs the application takes and the outputs it creates are identical, regardless of implementation, what does it matter?

You are trying to assign human characteristics to a piece of executable code.

Next you'll be telling us that you can tell what language various "Hello World" programmes were written in, just by looking at their output on screen!

Jo22 wrote on 2025-03-06, 19:17:

But question is, is it really wrong? To my observation, C/C++ programmers tend to be ambitious like fighter jet pilots. They wan […]
Show full quote

But question is, is it really wrong?
To my observation, C/C++ programmers tend to be ambitious like fighter jet pilots.
They want to optimize code, they don't leave notes in their C code etc.
Meanwhile, Basic and Pascal programmers are more problem-oriented.
They also often use IDEs with on-line help, which gives advices.
The typical C programmer uses a text editor and a command line compiler/linker like Power C.

Edit: Or let's put it this way: What on earth went wrong on the author's side that he/she decides to program in C/C++, -on DOS-, out of all languages?
I wonder if there's a relationship to cognitive peculiarities or something.

Edit: Or let me describe it this way.
Way back in the 90s, you had shareware/freeware/public domain authors who either began their readme files with "Hey there!", "Thank you for trying out my program" or other friendly greetings (cool speak in demo sceene).
People back then either were overly happy or polite, in short.

But what's left of this today? Exactly. FreeDOS utilities or modern day utilities in general look like they were written by a senior teacher.
They lack warmth. The human factor. The readme files don’t explain the inner workings of the programs in human readable form or what the original motivation was to write them.

Way back in the 90s, the authors not seldomly did that. They wrote a litlle essay, an introduction.
But the FreeDOS guys? They had 30 years to polish FreeDOS or to write nice readmes, to document the source code in great detail.

Your perspective is very, very strange. But, yes, in a warped way I do see what you mean. Realize, of course, that with anything DOS-related, you'll be dealing with oldsters. It's a 40+ year-old operating system. I love it, swear by it, live it even now, always have, but, yes I'm not a young chicken. It's infinitely preferable to some bloated walled garden with artificial limitations and 2525 abstraction layers in the way. Young people today, all they want is a phone and they don't care at all about DOS. It's sad but very, very true. There aren't very many people left who care about interacting with and understanding their hardware on a direct and raw bare metal level.

But, also consider that people behaved differently and acted differently in the 1980s and 1990s than they do now. They were much less serious, less inhibited, bullshit political correctness was not even on the radar, and many many more people (even programmers, especially programmers!) had a sardonic sense of humor. Most of that's lost in the world of 2025, and it's a real shame. But DOS survives. Thankfully.

So, the "seriousness" and "dryness" of documentation is a small price to pay. I don't mind it. I can go either way and not be bothered. Flexibility's the key. C++ / C programmers are more "serious" because it's a "harder" language than BASIC / Pascal. But, BASIC and Pascal were fun languages. So, people had more "fun" with them. It makes sense.

I usually physically disconnect the primary drive when installing a new OS on a secondary drive. This avoids problems like the one described above. It also allows you to do things that normally aren't possible, like parallel installations of MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 9x on the same system. I even have one system that dual boots Windows 98 and Windows ME. (You must use a boot manager for this of course.)

zyzzle wrote on 2022-06-09, 12:25:

The problem with running baremetal DOS on a new system is that, even if the system has a non-UEFI "legacy" mode for a real MBR / BIOS bootmode, the video is likely to be so crippled as to not even run most DOS games.

I remember futzing around with pure DOS and a GTX 960 card and the CGA/EGA modes were completely messed up, with garbled graphics and mixed-up colors. VGA was OK though.

@megatron-uk It’s funny, your logical reasoning is basically what I meant (-> it's not plain function that matters to me).
What I liked about the DOS world of old was the difference to Unix, the different mentality, if we will.

DOS was like a continuation of the CP/M era, which itself was a time of micros vs mainframes. Hobbyists vs engineers in suits.
In CP/M era, MBASIC or BASIC-80 was the spiritual predecessor to what later was GW-BASIC in DOS.
Turbo Pascal 3 was available on both CP/M and DOS.

Even more, Turbo Pascal became the central role to many PC owners.:
They bought a PC for school or university, to run class room software at home.
The IT class was all about programming good readable code in Pascal.
This continued up to the 2000s, I think, when Turbo Pascal or Object Pascal (Delphi) remained sort of a reference for good mannered programming.

Then there were also PC users who wrote nifty, efficient code in 8086 macro assembler. Public Domain software had many ASM programs.
This too was a continuation from the CP/M era, when programmers wrote low-level in Z80 machine language.

And then there was QuickBasic, combining elements of Pascal and Basic.
Many electronic books had examples written in QB (and TP, partially).
For interfaces that could be attached to game port, parallel port etc.
Things like a relays cards, a running light etc.

It was like a bridge to the home computer world, which also was being Basic-centric but more limited.
And what both had in common was being lighthearted, the positive atmosphere.

Now when I look at FreeDOS, though, I see C/C++ and the Linux/Unix philosophy. And people that are like Linux/Unix programmers.
People who appear to be strict, pedantic, to constantly correct others harshly for minor inaccuraties
and seem to have no sense for diplomacy or sense of humor.
Or rather: Not my weird, obsolete kind of humor from 80s/90s.

But that's okay, these people don't need to change. Who am I that I can say who's wrong or right? 🤷‍♂️
All I can do is decide for myself, silently, if I want to involve myself or not. If I do fit in or not.
So it's all good, I think. No need to get upset for anyone. I think I simply have weird priorities here, which are more emotional than rational.

What I wrote before was just me thinking out loud, not even a judgment.
I merely thought that AlexZ might want to know how I feel about FreeDOS, because I do respect FreeDOS and think it's okay at heart,
while also having my certain struggles with it.

I hope I worded that right, my English isn't that great at the moment.

@zyzzle Thank you, your analysis is spot on I think.
People have changed, but not me. I'm more or less same person I was in ~1995, despite still being curious and being more humble.
Not sure why. Maybe my personality already was full being developed back then, or maybe I'm just stuck. I don’t know, I often wonder about it. 🤷‍♂️
Sometimes when I wake up and leave the house and meet other people it feels like I was frozen in time for decades.
And that's why I'd like to stick with DOS 5/6 ecosystem if I can, rather than the new FreeDOS one. Because it feels more like home.
The FreeDOS world is a different one, it doesn't suit me. But it does suit others, likely. So that's okay. I'm happy for them and glad that DOS is still in use, no matter which version.

zyzzle wrote on 2025-03-07, 01:44:

But, also consider that people behaved differently and acted differently in the 1980s and 1990s than they do now. They were much less serious, less inhibited, bullshit political correctness was not even on the radar, and many many more people (even programmers, especially programmers!) had a sardonic sense of humor. Most of that's lost in the world of 2025, and it's a real shame. But DOS survives. Thankfully.

So, the "seriousness" and "dryness" of documentation is a small price to pay. I don't mind it. I can go either way and not be bothered. Flexibility's the key. C++ / C programmers are more "serious" because it's a "harder" language than BASIC / Pascal. But, BASIC and Pascal were fun languages. So, people had more "fun" with them. It makes sense.

I hadn't considered that the difference in demeanour might be a more cautious 'public' face, to avoid a potential over sensitive backlash, that's an interesting point. times are indeed different now.

I kind of get the point that was made too, i remember the fun 90's and the kinds of readmes, code comments and so forth. that doesn't happen so much now, but i dont think it is age in freedos case, that's just a small collection of people centred around a specific task and developing a particular "way of doing things". Back in the 80's and 90's the perceived audience of your program was wider and less well known - downloaders on bbs and early internet - and so a more "hi there" friendly tone was also the norm as was an openly and joyfully amateur/hacker culture

i also got the point on c vs other languages. its strange but i think there is an element in c programming "culture" that are somewhat precious about their language and the standards. i do recall in the 90's many innocent questions in early forums and usenet being quickly and abruptly shut down by c standards gatekeepers, the mere mention of dos or conio.h got "that is not part of the c language" responses while the same questions on QB and Pascal forums got lots of help usually. However there were also lots of c developer who were friendly and fun, often around game programming for instance in the early allegro days.

that said i wouldn't even try and get DOS working on a modern PC now (or even a late 32bit pc), indeed i'd use pcem or just install dosbox and go with that - the environment provides the same sense of "dos" without the pains of trying to install on hardware that really doesn't sit comfortably with it

If you want to have multiple modern operating systems co-existing with DOS you should use their own modern tools to make partition for DOS, multibooting etc. DOS tools are very basic and I wouldn't use them for anything else than low risk formatting and partitioning of an empty disk. There are many Windows and Linux free partition managers which are million times better, more user friendly than any version of fdisk from DOS era. Don't forget to backup if you have important data. If you didn't you should blame yourself instead of writing a rant about FreeDOS fdisk. Also there is a very good recent software for DOS: DiskGenius v5.2.0.878. It can do all kind of partitions and it's also reliable as a backup solution.

Rant about C is another thing I don't understand. Most DOS software was made using ASM, C and Pascal instead of Basic but that's far from "DOS on a modern PC" topic.