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Favorite version of x86 DOS?

MS-DOS 6.22 with the supplemental disk and missing stuff added. Three Words....Multi-Boot-Config!

My main purpose for my vintage machines is gaming, and cross using those machines with modern Windows boxes and semi-modern media requires the use of specialized hardware with real-mode-memory-eating-drivers for a 286 or PC/XT Class system. My GEM 286 box has over 8 different bootable configurations on it and probably the largest config.sys and autoexec.bat I've ever seen on a DOS based x86 PC. Also, I can create an emergency boot without using the floppy drive, and control the memory configuration for certain games/programs (like Ultima VII which requires a files=40 or files=45 in your config.sys file).

My only problem is Windows 1.01 does not work so well with it, but that's an issue I'll tackle some other day as that is probably the last thing on my list to mess around with. As long as WFWG311 works on top of it happily, I'll be a happy camper.
 
REAL Dos users don't need wfw ;)

Just thought I'd throw that in. Some nice stuff coming out of this thread. Keep at it.....
 
Caluser2000 said:
REAL Dos users don't need wfw.
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Especially when you've got good ol' MS Lan Manager. There's nothing like pulling card drivers off disks, editing startup files,, error messages, and hoping it works right. We don't need WFWs simpler method of network installation.:)

And now we have mTCP.
 
vwestlife said:
Most serious DOS users prefer PC DOS 7.0/2000! It runs just as well on my original IBM 5150 PC as it does on a Pentium.
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I don't doubt that PC DOS is superior in many ways :) and that DOS users might well benefit from it's use, but I'm not sure that the usage is as widespread as the word "most" might imply. Just like some users prefer 5.0 to 6.22, the choice is likely not based so much on the superiority of the version, but that it is where they became comfortable and it is a mature DOS that will allow them to do whatever work they do.

vwestlife said:
Less than MS-DOS 6.22, because you can load COMMAND.COM and most of the system data (buffers, file handles, stacks, etc.) into upper memory.
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Not being familiar with PC DOS 7.0 in practical use, I offer only the following for your consideration:
Code: 
MS-DOS Version 6.22 with SMARTDRV, INTERLNK, and 13 TSRs:

Modules using memory below 1 MB:

  Name           Total       =   Conventional
  --------  ----------------   ----------------
  MSDOS       21,901   (21K)     21,901   (21K)
  COMMAND      3,776    (4K)      3,776    (4K)

  Type of Memory       Total   =    Used    +    Free
  ----------------  ----------   ----------   ----------
  Conventional         655,360       25,952      629,408
  Upper                151,152      126,192       24,960
 
I just went through all my boot disks, and ran CHKDSK on each one to display the amount of free RAM (out of 640K) on each one, using a totally clean boot (no CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT):

PC DOS 2.00 ... 630,672 bytes
PC DOS 2.10 ... 630,672
PC DOS 3.10 ... 616,432
MS-DOS 3.10 ... 616,432
PC DOS 3.21 ... 609,392
PC DOS 3.30 ... 600,528
MS-DOS 3.30 ... 600,368
IBM DOS 5.00 ... 593,328
MS-DOS 5.00 ... 593,328
MS-DOS 6.00 ... 592,256
IBM DOS 6.10 ... 593,056
MS-DOS 6.22 ... 592,256
PC DOS 6.30 ... 593,024
PC DOS 7.00 Revision 0 ... 593,840
PC DOS 2000 (7.00 Revision 1) ... 593,760

I also have an MS-DOS 4.01 boot disk, but not a copy of CHKDSK which will work with it, so I can't give it an accurate free RAM amount, but judging by what other utilities report, it's somewhere in the ballpark of 590,000 bytes. So IBM claimed that PC DOS 7 offered the most free RAM of any version of DOS since 3.3, and that does appear to be true!
 
@vwestlife. Your numbers tell the story eloquently. The reasons for using DOS 3.3 over, say, DOS 6.22 are small indeed.

However, on a 386 or better, the motivation for using 6.22 and above are pretty strong--you shift a lot of the load out of base RAM. The support for FAT32 and long file names is enough of a motivation for me to use MSDOS 7.1 on my systems with extended memory.

Has anyone found FreeDOS to be significant smaller or faster than the product from Redmond?
 
vwestlife said:
I just went through all my boot disks, and ran CHKDSK on each one to display the amount of free RAM (out of 640K) on each one, using a totally clean boot (no CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT):
Click to expand...
Thanks for going to all that work for us!

Chuck(G) said:
@vwestlife. Your numbers tell the story eloquently. The reasons for using DOS 3.3 over, say, DOS 6.22 are small indeed.

However, on a 386 or better, the motivation for using 6.22 and above are pretty strong--you shift a lot of the load out of base RAM. The support for FAT32 and long file names is enough of a motivation for me to use MSDOS 7.1 on my systems with extended memory.
Click to expand...

I have only rarely actually found the amount of memory to be the dealbreaker. I guess it depends on the kinds of things you do. What I have found is lack of space on floppy only systems. That's where 3.3 shines. That extra 54K or so makes a big difference on a 360K disk.

Has anyone found FreeDOS to be significant smaller or faster than the product from Redmond?
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I followed FreeDOS on the mailing list from before the name was even being discussed, and feel a strong idealistic affinity to it. However, in the end I decided that the more polished MS-DOS was what I needed. With Simtel and my own carefully culled collection of utilities at my disposal all I really need is a good kernel. I'm a strong opponent of all things Microsoft, but I'm not stupid either. Politics aside, whatever people may say about some of their software, they make a fine DOS. :)

I thought I would just check a disk with FreeDOS 1.0 on it. It has two basic files. KERNEL.SYS 45341 bytes, and COMMAND.COM 66945 bytes. I could spend more time with it, but it's already bugging me. Several non MS utilities wouldn't run and locked it up. MS utilities give the expected "wrong version" message. Sorry, but I can't stand it any longer tonight, so I'm not going to spend the extra time sorting out the way to find out more about it.

I know they were thin on resources and it was pushed to the end - but calling it version 1.0 is stretching it, to my way of thinking. I really wish it wasn't so. :)
 
OK, I wrote a FreeDOS 1.0 diskette without autoexec.bat and config.sys. Then went and dug out (from deep in their distro where it is safe from prying eyes) their chkdsk and mem. (Why is their distribution a big mess as if it was a snapshot of a developer's HDD?) Anyway, on this computer, chkdsk takes a long time (3 sec or so) to get itself sorted and does not work on ram disks. It also doesn't report RAM. I tested a few diags and screen candy programs from my HDD and they feel like they open fast. One thing that seems weird is that every time I type the DIR command, it goes back to the floppy to get it. You wouldn't notice this in some cases, but it could be irritating in others.

The FreeDOS MEM command works, and reports: 509,856 bytes.
 
The current version of FreeDos is 1.1. How does that compare? http://www.freedos.org/freedos/files/
Apparently it cleared up a lot of 1.0 issues and of course there is a more current kernal.

It's good to see it still under developement. It has with some useful apps that can be used with basicly any dos variant on the ISO from what I can gather.

At the end of the day it comes down to what your comfortable with. On harddrives under 500megs I'm happy with any post 90 era Dos. But I do like variety. I like the way DrDos variants intergrate with PC/Geos. Any bigger hdd and it's usually Dos 7.1 for the reasons Chuck has outlined. Managed to download the DCU disks images and ISO before they disappeared, so no need to have a GUI on installation at all at all if I so desired.

Unsure why, but recently I got a good deal on 5 sealed boxes PC Dos 5.02 so will be having a gander at that some time soon.
 
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I sorta liked IBM's distributions over Microsoft's due to the add-in tools. My first 486 came with PC-DOS 6.1 installed. The thing I didn't like about it was the silly IBM E Editor. I eventually switched to MS-DOS 6.22 for the added Windows tools and updated MSCDEX and other built-in tools. I was using Windows 95 by the time PC-DOS 7 came out. I never really used MS-DOS 7.1 standalone as a main OS, but that free space bug on FAT32 drives was kinda annoying.
 
njroadfan said:
I was using Windows 95 by the time PC-DOS 7 came out. I never really used MS-DOS 7.1 standalone as a main OS, but that free space bug on FAT32 drives was kinda annoying.
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The really strange thing with PC DOS 7 is that IBM hardly ever shipped it on their own computers! I remember IBM usually gave you the choice of either PC DOS 6.3 + WfWG 3.11, OS/2 Warp 3.x, or Windows 95. I can only guess either they had a large overstock of PC DOS 6.3 they needed to sell off, or maybe it was some strange contractural requirement for them to only ship a Microsoft-developed version of DOS, because after 6.3, IBM broke off from Microsoft and developed PC DOS 7 exclusively on their own.

Microsoft released updated versions of FDISK and FORMAT for Windows 98/98SE to properly handle FAT32 drives larger than 64 GB. Both still display garbled and inaccurate disk space totals when using drives larger than 99 GB, but aside from that cosmetic glitch, I've had no trouble FDISK'ing and formatting 120 GB hard drives. However, Windows 95/98 SCANDISK is limited to 127 GB, and there is no fix for that.
 
Caluser2000 said:
The current version of FreeDos is 1.1. How does that compare? http://www.freedos.org/freedos/files/
Apparently it cleared up a lot of 1.0 issues and of course there is a more current kernal.
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I just downloaded that and burnt the iso. I'm tempted to go on a rant about how difficult it is to find and write a simple floppy image, but I will start another thread about that. They deserve to be trounced. :) Anyway the pertinent information is:
Code: 
Total under 1 MB      640K       169K       471K

Largest executable program size       469K ([B]480,016[/B] bytes)

That's 29K less than version 1.0 and 110K less than MS-DOS 6.22.
 
Interesting. It'd make a good blog. Cheers for going though the hoops. Of course there reputedly is a "better DOS than DOS", but for the life of me cannot remember what that is :lol:

I've just been reading the PTS-Dos 2000 readme.txt which states "less memory usage in comparison with any other DOS".
It still seems to be available for purchase, but it's for 286s up.
 
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I have two favorite versions of DOS, PC-DOS in particular.

Anecdotally I like 2.1 because it was the first version of DOS I was exposed to, since in my high school at the time (1995) there was a room filled with IBM PCJr's stacked floor to ceiling along with the books and software to boot. I did end up getting a DOS 2.1 package, but the hardware and the rest of the software is gone with the wind, just like the stack of black Bell & Howell Apple II's that were in there too. I like 3.3 because that was the version we had when I graduated in 99. You would think that a school would have some more updated technology in 99' but our business classroom was full of IBM PS/2 Model 25's running DOS 3.3 and PFS:First Choice.

So in closing, I have 3 System/1 Units. The PC & XT run DOS 2.1 and my AT runs DOS 3.3 with TopView.
 
My preferred DOS for vintage PC gear is IBM PC DOS 2000. It's PC DOS 7.x but with Y2K fixes, so that a file dated "3-14-2012" actually looks right, not "3-14-112".

I have no need for FAT32 in DOS, so I don't use newer variants. If I had to, I would probably pick FreeDOS since development is ongoing.
 
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