It is pure DOS.

The version command reports "Windows 98" even though you are in pure DOS mode, because it's the special "Windows 98 DOS" (i.e. MS-DOS version 7.1) that allows loading of Win9x on top of it.

Basically it is identical to DOS 6.22 except for FAT32 support and allowing Windows 9x to load on top of it. I even use it for all my pure DOS stuff because of the FAT32 support.

keenmaster486 wrote:

It is pure DOS.

The version command reports "Windows 98" even though you are in pure DOS mode, because it's the special "Windows 98 DOS" (i.e. MS-DOS version 7.1) that allows loading of Win9x on top of it.

Basically it is identical to DOS 6.22 except for FAT32 support and allowing Windows 9x to load on top of it. I even use it for all my pure DOS stuff because of the FAT32 support.

Well...it appears to be not DOS enough to be recognized as DOS by certain software that needs to be run in DOS mode. Such as the aforementioned SB16 driver installer. I'm reading now about how to dual-boot Win98 and DOS 6.22, so maybe that's the only option since what I need is "real" DOS.

again, it is pure DOS

the creative DOS utilities are just a bitch, if you look for a "DOS 7.1 SB16 driver package" or somesuch on vogons drivers you will find what you need

Some software detects "Windows" in the version string, or something like that, and refuses to run.

Windows 3.1, for example, won't start in DOS 7.1 because it thinks Windows is already running or something. There is a patch to remove the detection code because, it being real pure DOS, works just fine.

A lot of software didn't know about DOS 7.1 when it was created.

is it possible to patch io.sys or whatever to simply display dos 7.1 or 6.25 or whatever so this doesn't occur?

you can spoof it with Setver, I could be wrong.

Example
setver 6.22

the CTCU plug and play configuration utility actually looks for an environment variable that's automatically set in DOS 7.x, there is a patched version around that removes the check and then works fine