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Which flavor of DOS for my XT?

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sqpat

Experienced Member
Joined
Mar 21, 2009
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Seattle, WA
Soon enough, my 2 or 3 month XT-repairing odyssey will come to an end and I'll finally have a new hard drive, or at least a darned 3.5" floppy drive for my XT. I need some recommendations as far as what DOS-based OSes to use, since I'm not familiar with them.

(If someone could just give me a good link that differentiates various versions and flavors of DOS instead, that'd be great.)

- If the hard drive is fine... I'll probably be looking for the most fully-featured DOS that will run acceptably on the XT. At the very least, I want support for decently-sized hard drive partitions, and the ability to use ethernet packet drivers.

- If the hard drive fails, is there a certain version of DOS that I can run off the 3.5" floppy drive? Won't need to have terribly many features.

And some questions:

- How do early windows versions work? Do they come with some flavor of MS-DOS pre-installed? Do they require a pre-existing MS-DOS installation? I'm somewhat interested in how an early crappy graphical OS would look.

- Does FreeDOS happen to run well on an XT, or is it too slow?
 
For an XT, i would recomend MS-DOS 3.0 to 5.0. To use Windows, you must have a version of DOS that is already installed. As for freeDOS, i dunno if it will run. You can always try Caldera DR-DOS too. Any of these DOS versions should run on a HD 3.5" floppy disk.
 
sqpat said:
Soon enough, my 2 or 3 month XT-repairing odyssey will come to an end and I'll finally have a new hard drive, or at least a darned 3.5" floppy drive for my XT. I need some recommendations as far as what DOS-based OSes to use, since I'm not familiar with them.

(If someone could just give me a good link that differentiates various versions and flavors of DOS instead, that'd be great.)
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_x86_DOS_operating_systems

sqpat said:
- If the hard drive is fine... I'll probably be looking for the most fully-featured DOS that will run acceptably on the XT. At the very least, I want support for decently-sized hard drive partitions, and the ability to use ethernet packet drivers.
Click to expand...

MS-DOS or PC-DOS 6.22 !!!!
Support for greater than 32mb hard drive partitions. Has a decent editor also. Earlier versions had EDLIN which I found very frustrating and clumsy.

sqpat said:
- If the hard drive fails, is there a certain version of DOS that I can run off the 3.5" floppy drive? Won't need to have terribly many features.
Click to expand...

Hopefully real soon some of the guys on this forum will be finished with the 8-bit ISA IDE controller. When that is available, replacing a failed MFM drive with an IDE will be a great option. I wouldn't think of running an XT off of floppies when you could use a hard drive.

sqpat said:
- How do early windows versions work?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't even consider it. Windows is a multitasking OS and was best suited for computers with processors than supported "protected mode" and the "virtual DOS machine" (the 8086 does not have it! Only 80286 and above).
 
I run IBM PC DOS 3.3 on my XT, as it supports one partition for the 20 mb harddisk.
4.00 I'd skip, and the higher versions are bigger in conventional ram.

The AT and XT-286 run 5.02, because otherwise the ZIP driver won't work.

The PC has 3.3 also, but I'm considering to go to 2.10, as it has only a 10 MB harddisk anyway. (Yeah, yeah - send me a full height floppy drive and I'll take it out!)
 
barythrin said:
This is a fairly nice comparison chart on dos versions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_x86_DOS_operating_systems
Click to expand...

One bit of information left out is whether or not the DOS version will run on an 8088. DR-DOS 6/MS-DOS 6 will, MS-DOS 7 and later will not (I don't know about later FreeDOS or DR-DOS versions). Unless you're limited by memory, these are pretty good choices. Earlier DOS versions generally use less memory, with DOS 1.1 living comfortably in a 64K machine.
 
sqpat said:
Soon enough, my 2 or 3 month XT-repairing odyssey will come to an end and I'll finally have a new hard drive, or at least a darned 3.5" floppy drive for my XT. I need some recommendations as far as what DOS-based OSes to use, since I'm not familiar with them.

(If someone could just give me a good link that differentiates various versions and flavors of DOS instead, that'd be great.)

- If the hard drive is fine... I'll probably be looking for the most fully-featured DOS that will run acceptably on the XT. At the very least, I want support for decently-sized hard drive partitions, and the ability to use ethernet packet drivers.

- If the hard drive fails, is there a certain version of DOS that I can run off the 3.5" floppy drive? Won't need to have terribly many features.

And some questions:

- How do early windows versions work? Do they come with some flavor of MS-DOS pre-installed? Do they require a pre-existing MS-DOS installation? I'm somewhat interested in how an early crappy graphical OS would look.

- Does FreeDOS happen to run well on an XT, or is it too slow?
Click to expand...


Swap out the motherboard and install a new core2duo one and run Dos Windows Vista, you'll have the sportiest XT in all IBM Land! :rolleyes:
 
gerrydoire said:
Swap out the motherboard and install a new core2duo one and run Dos Windows Vista, you'll have the sportiest XT in all IBM Land! :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Sorry - this is off-topic and borderline noise. Resist the temptation for the snappy one-liners.
 
My experiences:

  • DOS 2.1 - it runs on this hardware. DOS 2.0 was released to support the XT hard drive, so it is contemporary. But it is not a particularly user friendly version of DOS. Replacing COMMAND.COM with something like 4DOS helps tremendously.
  • DOS 3.3 - A good, small version of DOS for hardware like this. Includes enough DOS function calls to be usable with many older device drivers.
  • DOS 5 - lowest level of DOS needed for CD-ROM and many parallel port storage devices. But this version of DOS recomputes the amount of free space on the drive occasionally, which on an XT results in a multiple second delay. (And the delay gets longer with the size of the hard drive partition.) On the other hand, it does support the bigger FAT 16 partitions.
  • DOS 6.2 - Works, but does not provide much additional function over DOS 5.
  • DOS 7 - Not much experience, but it worked. (I tried it on a hard drive that was installed from another machine and it worked!)

For an XT with an original hard drive (or something that size) go with DOS 3.3. If you need a CD-ROM or Zip drive use DOS 5.


-Mike
 
Jorg said:
The PC has 3.3 also, but I'm considering to go to 2.10, as it has only a 10 MB harddisk anyway. (Yeah, yeah - send me a full height floppy drive and I'll take it out!)
Click to expand...

I'd advise against it--DOS 3 introduced a bunch of new system calls and it's likely that later software won't run on it, limiting your options.
 
Yes, Mike's got the rundown. For myself I'd shorten the the list to 3.3 for floppy only and 6.* for winchester.

I have Toshiba DOS 3.2 and it seems to be lacking some major features like @echo off, I guess the MS version has the same problems, but I don't have a version handy to check. A good reason to use 3.3 over 3.2 is the 1.44 floppy support. A good reason for using 3.3 rather than 6.* on a floppy is the size.

Here is a size comparison for MS-DOS:
6.0 - 131533
5.0 - 118669
4.1 - 108270
3.2 - 77793
 
Chuck(G) said:
I'd advise against it--DOS 3 introduced a bunch of new system calls and it's likely that later software won't run on it, limiting your options.
Click to expand...

Well, you have to understand: I am an engineer.
And at the moment, everything works without any problems. So...
But, point taken- I just wanted to try.

When I had an XT that was not vintage, I used MS-DOS 3.21- I always liked that version too.
 
Last edited:
It all depends of the usage.

PC DOS 1.x is only usefull if you are using a PC with < 64Kb RAM.

If you are in the more "classic" courner, and don't really care about getting the most out of your XT, you may use PC DOS 2.0. PC DOS 2.1 only adds PCjr support, so it's really no difference between the two versions when running on an XT.

If you don't got too much RAM, and would like to get the most out of your system, PC DOS 3.x is ideal. As other mentioned, PC DOS 3.3 is the best choice as it got more SW/HW-support than the other 3.x versions. If you got a somewhat average XT-based hard drive (lesser than 32Mb), PC DOS 3.3 would be the best choice.

You DON'T want MS DOS 4.x. It's full of bugs!

If you got the RAM maxed out, and want a lot of feautres that really aren't designed for an XT (like CD-ROMs and big hard drives > 32Mb), and got some nice userfriendly (and memory hungry) programs, MS DOS 5.0 is the choice. It includes some programs like "Edit" or "DOS-Shell", but they where seldom used because of the breakthrough of Windows 3.x.

MS DOS 6.x is mostly MS DOS 5.0 with more features you'll never need in an XT. Choose MS DOS 5.0 instead.

In other words,

If you got 256Kb RAM and a MFM hard drive; get PC DOS 3.3
If you got 640Kb RAM and a MFM hard drive; get PC DOS 3.3
If you got 256Kb RAM and an IDE hard drive; Not recomended.
If you got 640Kb RAM and an IDE hard drive; get MS DOS 5.0


Of course there are some DOS versions from other vendors I haven't tried or looked into. There is problably something better than what I've suggested, but I can't say what since I don't know.
 
per said:
PC DOS 1.x is only usefull if you are using a PC with < 64Kb RAM.
Click to expand...

DOS 1.x uses 8-sector floppies, has no hard disk support, and can't be used with much of any software made after 1983.

per said:
If you are in the more "classic" corner, and don't really care about getting the most out of your XT, you may use PC DOS 2.0. PC DOS 2.1 only adds PCjr support, so it's really no difference between the two versions when running on an XT.
Click to expand...

DOS 2.1 fixed some bugs in 2.0. It's good for an unexpanded PCjr.

per said:
If you don't got too much RAM, and would like to get the most out of your system, PC DOS 3.x is ideal. As other mentioned, PC DOS 3.3 is the best choice as it got more SW/HW-support than the other 3.x versions. If you got a somewhat average XT-based hard drive (lesser than 32Mb), PC DOS 3.3 would be the best choice.
Click to expand...

DOS 3.30 supports all the standard floppy formats and is bug-free (DOS 3.20 had a number of bugs).

per said:
You DON'T want MS DOS 4.x. It's full of bugs!
Click to expand...

I agree. I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole.

per said:
If you got the RAM maxed out, and want a lot of feautres that really aren't designed for an XT (like CD-ROMs and big hard drives > 32Mb), and got some nice userfriendly (and memory hungry) programs, MS DOS 5.0 is the choice. It includes some programs like "Edit" or "DOS-Shell", but they where seldom used because of the breakthrough of Windows 3.x.
Click to expand...

Now, if you want to run Windows on an XT, the DOS version you use is very important. Windows 2.x normally won't work with DOS 5.x and 6.x, and for Windows 3.0, DOS 3.30 is a necessity because 5.x and 6.x use too much memory.

per said:
MS DOS 6.x is mostly MS DOS 5.0 with more features you'll never need in an XT. Choose MS DOS 5.0 instead.
Click to expand...

Indeed. Features like MEMMAKER are of no use on XTs.

per said:
Of course there are some DOS versions from other vendors I haven't tried or looked into. There is probably something better than what I've suggested, but I can't say what since I don't know.
Click to expand...

Like I said, Compaq DOS 3.31 supports >32MB partitions (all other versions didn't get that until 4.x). At the time, it was widely used on non-Compaq machines for that reason. Jorg might be right about it being 3.30 and not 3.31; I can't remember for sure. There were several revisions of it (which is what the letter designations indicate).
 
Just for reference my 5160 has 640k Ram, a single 360k drive and a 10Mb MFM drive.

It came with Dos 3.3 installed. Once I got the drive working again, I installed DOS 5.

IMO Dos 5 actually runs faster than DOS 3.3 did on this machine, the system responds a bit quicker and boots a bit faster too. But fully installed it chews up a bit more space than DOS 3.3 (5 takes up about 3Mb IIRC), and RAM (about 35k).

I am going to install DOS 6.22 on it at somepoint to see how that runs.

The basic idea that I am getting from this thread is that it really depends on what you are going to do with the machine before you determine the OS choice.
 
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