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Looking For Dos for my IBM 5160 XT

johnnydicamillo

Experienced Member
Joined
May 15, 2011
Messages
88
Location
California
I have a 5160 XT and I have spent quite a but of money on it to get it running so I am a bit low on cash right this minuet, however I will be getting more money next month. Anyway I am looking for a good version of dos for my IBM 5160 XT. It has a 20mb hard drive and 640kb of ram. and I believe it has a 8088 cpu. I am also interested in learning Qbasic so it would be nice to have a version of dos that includes qbasic in it such as (MS-DOS 5.0 and higher) and (PC-DOS 5.x according tohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBasic) so if anyone is willing to sell me a version of dos that includes qbasic for a good price that would be great.
 
Dude, be careful about dual-posts... the mods here prefer to keep the site clean for future searchers :) If you google for threads on this site, you'll find that your question has been asked before and all the usual places have been pointed at. If you check your other thread in PCs and Clones, you'll see that your questions have already been answered, and that specific links to new in the box MS-DOS have been provided at relatively good prices.

So stop posting and get to checking eBay and the VCGM! :) They ARE out there!

Case in point: about 6 months ago, I picked up 5 NOS copies of DOS 6.2 for $1 apiece off of ebay (these were pack-ins for computer systems sold back in the day). Retail-boxed versions of DOS are available as well, but you're going to be limited with your ability to use DOS 5 and higher unless you have made yourself a transition machine out of a junker PII/PIII/PIV era machine (basically a setup that supports 1.44mb 3.5" floppies as well as either DD or HD 5.25" floppies) - or you've setup a link to send files from your modern computer to your vintage computer (how-to's are described on the webpage I linked in your other thread)

As far as I'm aware (please someone correct me if I'm wrong), DOS 5 and higher were only released on HD media, so you wouldn't be able to use those floppies in your XT unless you've already fitted it with a replacement floppy controller and high-density floppy drives.
 
DR DOS 5.00, $25 shipped on 5.25" media. Unsure if it's 360kb or 1.2mb media, however.

MS DOS 5.00 $30 shipped on 5.25" media.

DR DOS 6.0 on 5.25" 1.2mb media, $11.50 shipped

DOS 6.22 on 13 5.25" floppies - Considering that DOS 6.22 is on 3 3.5" HD diskettes, I'd bet that 13qty 5.25" diskettes were 360kb disks. $11 shipped.

That latter one is probably the one I'd go for if I were looking...
 
Or you could download some disk images, if you're not fussed about originals, for free!
 
Good stuff :)

I doubt MS would be too fussed about sharing the software we're talking about here though!
 
I'd argue MS demonstrated it didn't care about DOS software licensing when it made available Word 5.5 free-of-charge back in 1999 - but in reality, who is going to care though! Anyway, off topic, sorry :)
 
Off topic but relevant to the MS licence thing. I tried to contact MS about getting copies of DOS 6.22 and 5.0, after about an hour on the phone going back and forward I was eventually told that they maintain all of their copyrights and will pursue them on any MS product even legacy ones, but they do not have any copies of MS-DOS to sell. In other words go away, but DO NOT make illegal copies of our software, no matter how old it is.
 
Off topic but relevant to the MS licence thing. I tried to contact MS about getting copies of DOS 6.22 and 5.0, after about an hour on the phone going back and forward I was eventually told that they maintain all of their copyrights and will pursue them on any MS product even legacy ones, but they do not have any copies of MS-DOS to sell. In other words go away, but DO NOT make illegal copies of our software, no matter how old it is.

Which is exactly the reason (1994 MS announcement) that Jim Hall decided to start the FreeDOS project.

Anyway, it sounds like the OP prefers original floppies in this case. Not knowing the year he is aiming at, one can't really make a recommendation, but MS-DOS 5.0 (1991) seems incorrect to me - not the least because it is larger and has unneeded features. As others have mentioned, 3.3 which came out in 1987 makes more sense on an XT. Actually, Digital Research put out their version 3.1 in 1988 so that could be an interesting historical choice as well - particularly because they were starting to compete with MS.
 
thats interesting maybe I should get 3.3, but I know that qbasic is included in ms-dos 5.0, and I found a version of DR DOS on ebay for only a couple dollars
 
thats interesting maybe I should get 3.3, but I know that qbasic is included in ms-dos 5.0, and I found a version of DR DOS on ebay for only a couple dollars

PC DOS 3.3 was released on April 2, 1987. What year is your machine, or what year are you placing the upgrades at? The XT first came out in '83 but of course was available for several years and was used for even longer, once 3.3 came out I guess that would be the most likely candidate. DOS 5.0 however didn't come out until June 6, 1991 so it is definitely wrong for this machine - unless your are trying for some kind of "Frankenstein" box. lol

As Bill suggests, 2.1 is an obvious choice. Note that the XT was introduced at the same time as DOS 2.0. My personal feeling is that if you want to run newer software you would be better off doing that on a newer machine - perhaps an AT?
 
I can say that I grew up using a 5150 - in the 1990's. At my high school, the English typing labs had PS/2 Model 8525-001's (the mono screen with two 720kb floppy drives). The typing class had Novell-networked 386's, and the computer applications and programming class had 5150's with monochrome screens. In fact, we only got color screens in my sophmore year (1992-1993) because a former student donated a few dozen PCjr machines to the school, and my computer teacher soldered the 9-pin DINS onto the Jr monitors so that we had CGA compatibility, dedicating the rest of his class's funds for the year to purchasing the 35 CGA cards to put in the machines to work with the new color monitors.

We ran DOS 3.3 on the in the computer lab. We used Microsoft Works v1.05, DBASE III, and Lotus 1-2-3 v2.1 for applications classes, and BASICA/Pascal for programming classes. Later, for the Programming II class, we were given the option of using QuickBasic 4.5 and bringing in our own boot disks. This was because most of the guys in our Programming I class had already created our own DOS 5.0 boot disks so that we could run QBasic (we were allowed to do anything we wanted that didn't make noise once our work was through), so by the time we hit programming II, we were all familiar with the new environment, and our teacher was more than happy to allow us to continue.

(of course there was also Pascal 3.0 that we learned in ProgII, but I tend to gloss over that since Basic was what I found to be fun)

One of our guys even wrote an email message-base. Users could create a username and password, perform look-up of other students, send and receive messages, and log out. The system had a bouncing ball screen-saver that would turn on after 15 minutes of inactivity, and would go to the login screen as soon as a key was pressed. All in QB4.5 (compiled, of course), running on a 5150 with both 360kb and 720kb floppy drives booted with DOS 5.0.

I guess my point is this - the OP seems to want to run QB on his 5160. The 5150/5160 series can do a lot of things, and for the most part, memory isn't that great of a concern unless you're writing serious code. I think his main point is that he wants an OS - any OS - and he wants QB. DOS 5.0 booting a 5150 will leave you with plenty of headroom for most things in BASIC. If he wants more headroom, then back-dating to 3.3 would be the obvious choice, to me, as it will have the most compatibility with the programs he might try to run while still leaving plenty of conventional memory available after OS load.
 
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I just did a search on eBay and couldn't find any auctions for MS-DOS or PC-DOS earlier than version 3. Most of the items for sale are 3.5" disks. There are some for sale in 5.25" format that he needs.I damn sure wouldn't pay anymore than $25 USD including shipping for it.
The OP is trying to get a 27 year old machine to boot. I don't see it being helpful to recommend software that is unobtainable or that he will have to wait 3 months (or longer) for it to come up at auction.

Yes, I'm being snarky.
 
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