I have plenty actually (XT to 486).

The first four in my signature 🙂

Sure. Two XTs and a few 286 PCs, for example.
Though they have CF cards installed and can also run other OSes, such as CP/M-86, Minix, PC-MOS/386 or OS/2.
The installed hardware was being chosen for DOS compatibility primarily.

Use cases: To play MOD music, browse the old internet (Minuet internet suite, for XTs), play some games, other hobby use (fractals, astronomy/moon phases, ham radio, electronics)..
There's surprisingly a lot of DOS software for all different needs.
Including very obscure stuff like rhyme maker programs or joke programs.

Edit: XT class PCs have the advantage that they can be re-built easily these days.
Let's take the NuXT project, for example. They're a great introduction to the DOS platform, I think.

I have two IBM PCjrs, so I guess technically not pure DOS, since they also run basic, but I don't think that's what you were after. Anyhow, I think pure DOS machines can be useful, especially when you're just trying to test the limits of older technology. But even for the PCjr, which came out in 1984, there are some pretty substantial GUI, like GEM, which provides overlapping windows, multitasking and DOS support (it launches DOS programs from a desktop environment), so the distinction of pure DOS can easily be lost.

yep. tandy sx, 486-dx-100 and a ss7 k62+ 500. no windows installed on them at all!

For gaming sure!
I don't use dos rigs for anything work related, unlike a Windows machine where I might quickly type up a doc.

Do you need a pure dos machine? no. But then same could be said for any retro machine really.

Yes! I use it every Sunday morning for an hour or two of good old gaming. Why, it's the Standard Def Family 486, and it runs none other than DOS 6.22. I shall now rattle off some specs:

80 MHz 486-DX2, 16MB memory, 1 gig hard drive, some 1MB VLB card--think it's a Cirrus Logic something or other--that's fast enough for the games we play on it, SB AWE64, ISA network card for fetching games and annual HDD backups, a 2003 era 17" CRT, and all the good sticks and pads. It's a wonderful little machine! 😊

I still have at least 5 - the one I use most is a PetiumMMX .. this is my main ImageDisk system.

I also have a P3, P4, PoqetPC (XT portable), and an old AASTRA (originally an XP based office
phone system) that I just run DOS on these days (internal CF card).

I use mainly DOS 5.0 on these, the Poqet has 3.3 (in ROM)

I sometimes boot up DOS on some of my other systems, but these aren't "DOS only"

I've got at least a dozen ranging from XT to Pentium MMX.

I tried putting Windows 95 on my 486 and quickly removed it because it was so slow and consumed so much of the disk.

So that's my only working pure DOS machine.

(I also have a couple of XTs and a 286 but they are all currently in pieces and not functional)

My Toshiba Tecra 500CDT used to have MS-DOS 6.22 installed on a Toshiba 1.35 GB hard drive, but when I got the hard drive upgraded to 6.49 GB last Christmas, I ended up installing Windows 95 OSR2 on it. The reason is my Logitech ScanMan Color 2000 required Windows 95 or later. Might not work under Windows 3.1 even with Win32s installed.

With only 32 MB on the machine, running Windows 95 OSR2 is not very reliable. 🙁

I've got 2 with DOS 6.2 in machines, one a 386 and one a celeron 500. There's a bunch of spare hard drives, 4 with DOS 7.1 and 10 with DOS 6.2, although most of the drives are on their last legs and could fail any time.

Most of the above have Windows 3.1 or WFW 3.11 on them as well.

The 2 that are in machines have networking via windows, and can access the internet. The one in the celeron also has a rather unreliable USB capability.

I have an XT clone built (in a modern-ish tower) around a DTK PIM-TB10-Z that is DOS-only, mostly as a way to use a Maxtor XT-1140 I have. I never got any hand-me-down XT class systems back in the 90s and 2000s when I was getting other PCs, so it was an interesting road to go down. I did get to use it as a favor to write out someone's disk image in some proprietary format as a 360K disk and then read it back in, for lack of a better way to convert it quickly.

Yep. DOS 6.22. 😀

It's my most used "retro" machine, play on it almost daily. Recently added a PicoGUS to it and built myself a Wavetable Pi for it.

https://theclassicgeek.blogspot.com/2024/02/a … s-3x-retro.html
https://theclassicgeek.blogspot.com/2025/03/i … ort-update.html

Of course! I wouldn't be living if I didn't keep my DOS machines running. In this age of artificial limitations, walled gardens, abstraction layers, forced needless upgrades, forced deprecation, and hideous bloat, my DOS machines keep me sane. They're priceless, and they will only increase in personal worth and value as fewer and fewer systems are even able to RUN dos bare-metal.

It is a relief to use a DOS machine every day. No internet, no lag, loads in 5 seconds flat from cold boot. Very, very fast even on a 20-year-old CPU. Hell, I prefer DOS for my sound, watching films (through the excellent DOS port of Mplayer and the Quickview Pro program), image viewing, PDF viewing, and I even write in good 'old DOS edit. So, I do still use my DOS machines for real productivity and as "real" systems. SB EMU and VSBHDA have made it possible to use sound in somewhat "modern" systems in DOS and play games, so that's an extra bonus. 10-15 year-old hardware works well now for DOS bare metal.

Of course, I'm forced to use a Windows system for accessing anything on the internet. But, I use a stripped-down version of Win 10 LTSC with most of the bloat castrated. And it still runs reasonably well after hundreds of little tweaks to eliminate the crap, speed it up, and gut it. But, it's nothing like using DOS.

Of course for all the classic games I use DOS. They're much better and more satisfying than today's games which require a $3000 graphics card and 1000 watts of power to run. Ridiculous.

I also still use DOS for my emulation needs. I don't need a 32-core i7 system costing $2k or more to emulate an Atari 2600, Coleco vision, Apple II, C64, NES, SNES, or any of the other classic consoles. And DOS works exceptionally well for emulating these systems and FAST and no bullshit as well. I even have a DOS system set up as a MAME cabinet connected up to a 15-hz CRT. It's divine.

I have a P133 and an IBM 5170 PC/AT @ 8Mhz just running DOS. The P133 is always hooked up and ready, I bring out the 5170 when I'm feeling nostalgic.

The era people in this hobby are interested in varies a lot, depending on age and exposure. If someone's childhood PC was an XT with an amber monitor it makes sense to have something similar now.

I don't anymore, back some years i had to clear out things. I still have lots of computers, too many really, but nothing older than pentium. Those could be pure dos but work well with windows 98 and i have never run into a compatibility problem that either a) wasn't easily solved, b) was resolved in dosbox/emulation elsewhere or c) didn't really matter anyway, I use 9x for occasional games but also for testing old DOS programs now and then.

I think i' like one, but evidently not enough to set up one up 😀

ncmark wrote on Today, 00:10:

I am just curious, does anyone still have a pure DOS machine?

Is this some kind of baiting to introduce us to some GUI cult?
I'm keeping an eye on you, ncmark.

konc wrote on Today, 06:41:

The era people in this hobby are interested in varies a lot, depending on age and exposure. If someone's childhood PC was an XT with an amber monitor it makes sense to have something similar now.

Very much so.
Memories are gold and a powerful drive to go back to them, by just owning the thing again.