Dos 6, 7 Or Freedos?

[The Fifth Horseman]

I'm currently building a machine for a) text-editing and B) DOS gaming. The first purpose will be fulfilled easily enough by Windows 98, but I am a bit unsure which version of DOS to use (note: it's not a dual-boot system, DOS will run from a completely different HDD).

So, should I use Dos 6.2, 7.1 or the FreeDos thingy? What are the points for and against each of th4ese choices? (note: I have already got a full CD copy of DOS 7.1)

[Reup]

Dos 6.2 is the most 'pure' DOS of them all and will give no compatibility problems. DOS 7.1 is probably more or less covered in your Win98 installation. I am however , very charmed by FreeDOS (mostly because I'm an Open Source evangelist). Most games seem to run in FreeDOS without any problems. FreeDOS is also a true 32-bit OS, which should have superior memory managment and less of the LMB problems the 'real' DOS had.

[Grinder]

I'd go for the "pure" 6.22, too. Although FreeDOS seems very good. Maybe those people learned from the mistakes Microsoft made. btw, is FreeDOS 100% compatible with MS-DOS?

[Reup]

Check out freedos.sourceforge.net (http://freedos.sourceforge.net)
Originally posted by freedos website
FreeDOS aims to be a complete, free, 100% MS-DOS compatible operating system
Afaik, they've gotten most of the DOS compatibilty done, but you can't run some shells yet, like Win3.11 on it for instance.

[win98]

Go for dos7.10 it is still original dos and is quiet good.

[Grinder]

I tried 7.1 once, I deleted it immediately. It just didn't feel like DOS anymore.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Gone through some trouble with the thing. I'll see if I could switch to FreeDos, at the moment it's Dos 7.1

[Gandalf]

Just curious:
was DOS 7.1 ever available as a standalone product? I can only remember it being once bundeled with Windows (95? 98? ME? ,don't know).


Edit:
erm, are we talking about MS DOS or PC DOS (Caldera)?

[The Fifth Horseman]

Windows 95 had Dos 6, AFAIK.

Windows 98 had Dos 7.

I've got a stand-alone MS-DOS 7.1 right in front of me.

[Grinder]

I think some people 'freed' it and made it available on the internet. You know, disk images and like that.

[Japo]

With my older machine I had a DOS 6.22 partition, while Windows 98 in the main partition. Some games worked in 6.22 and not so "rebooting in DOS mode" with Win98 (i.e. DOS 7.1). For example Star Control II, Crusader: No Remorse, Fields of Glory, Lords of the Realm, Syndicate, and many more. So I'd choose 6.22, it was designed with compatibility in mind and 7.1 wasn't. No idea about FreeDOS, but I'd still bet that 6.22 is the most compatible with games designed for DOS 6 and lower.

[The Fifth Horseman]

I'll be experimenting with both 6.22 and 7.1 using multi-boot, shortly.

[duckpatch]

I'm going to dual boot FreeDOS and Win98, both installed on a 500meg drive and then the games will be plunked on a second hard drive. Sounds like a plan.

[liamoneal13]

It's 6.22 all the way guys. If you have Win98 you have DOS 7 as part of it. I don't know FreeDOS though.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Buddy, this thread has pretty much finished a year ago.
Please don't raise the dead.

[sev7en]

There's also DRDOS but I suggest you to use the original MS' MS-DOS v6.22.

[GTX2GvO]

Well...

With dos 6.22 you're limited to FAT16 partitions with a max. size of 2GB. (of the partition that is)
With dos 7 you can use FAT32 with it's respective partition limit. (don't know this one)

I DO know there BOTH not capable of even seeing NTFS partitions.
So... Check your file system before you choose your dos.

I didn't knew there were any other differences between these two versions, exept for 'code improvements'.

[Japo]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(GTX2GvO @ May 26 2007, 11:03 PM) 291480</div>I didn't knew there were any other differences between these two versions, exept for 'code improvements'.[/b]
People say that the DOS version doesn't matter but in my experience it does matter. Up to v6 the backwards compatibility was exquisite of course, but with v7 (Win98 "restarting in DOS mode") some games stopped working. Not just a couple of games but quite a lot of them, at least in my old machine, I can't tell for others' machines. So if what you want is a DOS which will be compatible with your old games, go for v6. Of course you're limited to 2 Gb but there's no way you're going to need more in a DOS partition, is there? Otherwise you could enable more than one partition or move files to and from the FAT16 partition in Windows.

As for the changes between DOS v6 and v7 I know of a certain one. When I set up a DOS v6 partition in my old Win98 machine I encountered the problem of getting sound with a SBPCI128. Of course I used the SB16 emulation drivers that the card came with, and that Win98 used when booting DOS v7. But at first they didn't work, until I replaced the v6 EMM386.EXE with the v7 one. It was the only way the drivers worked and, even a DOS v6 with a v7 EMM386.EXE ran a lot of games which didn't run in DOS v7. So EMM386.EXE is different, but also surely MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS. What I mean is that there's a different between DOS v6 and v7, not to talk about using FreeDOS and such.

[Morrin]

What is the dos that "comes with" windows95? I was thinking of maybe digging up my old PC, formatting and starting fresh.

[The Fifth Horseman]

I _think_ it's 7.1 . But you can install Win95 on the top of DOS 6.22 - IIRC it will automatically create a boot option to run that version of DOS.

[Cold]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Japofran @ May 27 2007, 12:43 AM) 291489</div>
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(GTX2GvO @ May 26 2007, 11:03 PM) 291480I didn't knew there were any other differences between these two versions, exept for 'code improvements'.[/b]
People say that the DOS version doesn't matter but in my experience it does matter. Up to v6 the backwards compatibility was exquisite of course, but with v7 (Win98 "restarting in DOS mode") some games stopped working. Not just a couple of games but quite a lot of them, at least in my old machine, I can't tell for others' machines. So if what you want is a DOS which will be compatible with your old games, go for v6. Of course you're limited to 2 Gb but there's no way you're going to need more in a DOS partition, is there? Otherwise you could enable more than one partition or move files to and from the FAT16 partition in Windows.

As for the changes between DOS v6 and v7 I know of a certain one. When I set up a DOS v6 partition in my old Win98 machine I encountered the problem of getting sound with a SBPCI128. Of course I used the SB16 emulation drivers that the card came with, and that Win98 used when booting DOS v7. But at first they didn't work, until I replaced the v6 EMM386.EXE with the v7 one. It was the only way the drivers worked and, even a DOS v6 with a v7 EMM386.EXE ran a lot of games which didn't run in DOS v7. So EMM386.EXE is different, but also surely MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS. What I mean is that there's a different between DOS v6 and v7, not to talk about using FreeDOS and such.
[/b][/quote]



I confirm. In my experience, Dos7 was not the right choice and many games crushed, even if sometimes it's the only way to make a Dos boot disk running on Windows. Dos 6.22 is a garancy of compatibility, but it's not so easy to handle. It's all about a boot sector issue.


I think the games who suffer major problems using Ms7 are the games with Dos4gw. Several times it happens that games suddenly crushed during games with huge codeline, and this does not happen with Dos6 instead (Ex: theme park, Manic Karts)

[Grinder]

I'm back. In 2007, I spent a few months without a proper computer and had to fall back on my mom's old PC. I dual-booted Ubuntu with XP, got sick of XP, deleted it and thus had a partition left over. I figured I'd give FreeDOS a shot.




I hate FreeDOS. I tried 5 times, didn't get one clean installation. And I have tried everything.

[Sebatianos]

My sentiment exactly. Got Freedos with the drivers for my computer, but never could really get anything working. Never could really install it at all!

[fettoswe]

My sentiment exactly. Got Freedos with the drivers for my computer, but never could really get anything working. Never could really install it at all!

Same for me no games works for me under freedos I only us it then I flash bios e.t.c. Native dos in Vmware works much better or dosbox.

[fender178]

With freedos I couldnt even get the sound to work so I said enough of this. Dosbox is heck of alot better than freedos.

[fettoswe]

It would be nice to test freedos then it works 100% on my computer with sound and everything.

[Miles]

I'd go with MS-DOS 6.22 since it's mainly compatible with all old DOS games, except the type you have to use with SETVER. Although I am surprised no one mentioned DR-DOS.

[dosraider]

.... Although I am surprised no one mentioned DR-DOS.
It will work fine with serious applics (read:non-gaming software).
Same problem as with Freedos, almost 100% MSDos compatible, but that 'almost' gives troubles with the more troublesome games.

Oh my, reminds me, still haven't tested the DOS32A mem extender on it.
Hmmmm, will probably never do, not much reasons to do so, is it?

[Japo]

It will work fine with serious applics (read:non-gaming software).

More like, "it will work fine with console apps without sound", be they games or not (of course most are). :P And for that, you can rely as well on running it in Windows 32 bits (ntvdm.exe) 100% of the times... Actually ANY solution will do for a console app without sound--using a slowdown utility at most, if really necessary (won't be for most "serious" apps).

[dosraider]

More like, "it will work fine with console apps without sound", be they games or not (of course most are).
DrDos has SB drivers, SB16 works fine in it ,(Tested by moi), don't know how other cards behave on it.
And for that, you can rely as well on running it in Windows 32 bits (ntvdm.exe) 100% of the times... Actually ANY solution will do for a console app without sound--using a slowdown utility at most, if really necessary (won't be for most "serious" apps).
Try out that ntvdm joky in Vista ..... XD

[Japo]

Well SB also work on FreeDOS (right?), still 6.x will always be better. :D Like Virtual PC, it emulates a perfectly working SB16 most of the time... but when I try to play Tomb Raider it doesn't work perfectly. Not to talk about other millions of issues I find if I try to play other DOS games in there--the same as in a real DR-DOS I'd bet. (Of course DOSBox beats any other solution for 99.9% of the games, real DOS 6.x included, but you already know that.)

I haven't checked myself, but according to the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTVDM#History), even though no 64-bits Windows (XP included) includes a VDM, the 32-bits version of Vista would have it just like XP. (Otherwise the article must be edited.)

[dosraider]

The 32 bits version has it, but other matters interfere on Vista (strict access restrictions, no low res graphical support -only low res txt support- .... and so on.... and so on.... blablabla ...)

[Japo]

Well the point was that ntvdm.exe never was any good except for console apps, and didn't provide sound on its own.

[dipo]

With freedos I couldnt even get the sound to work so I said enough of this. Dosbox is heck of alot better than freedos.
Better? Them are two complete different things. The one is an emulator, the other one is an operating system.

For a newish PC user DOSBox is more easy to setup then FreeDOS.

It would be nice to test freedos then it works 100% on my computer with sound and everything.
I am using FreeDOS and I have dualboot with 6.22, 7.1, 8.0 and FreeDOS. Never found any application running not in FreeDOS, but in MS-DOS.

After a lot fiddling with DOS now my real DOS with orignal SB card works better for me then DOSBox.

[tikbalang]

i used msdos 6.22 for a long time but my pick is msdos 7.1 from win9x (except early version of win95) because of its fat32 and xms 3.0 support. fat32 allows drive partitions greater than 2gb and xms3 allows the usage of more than 64mb installed ram.

i don't see how msdos 7.10 became incompatible with DOS games, when in fact, there were games for win9x that were actually dos games.

freedos has excellent dos utilities but the kernel is still a bit dodgy for games.

[red_avatar]

Just wondering but why would you want more than 64MB memory in DOS? No software was even made to use that much and if anything, certain games test for memory and if it's more than 32MB, these games tend to flip out and say you don't have enough.

[tikbalang]

i have not encountered the 32mb barrier so far but i have seen apps that keel over with more than 620kb base memory. any apps/games that use dos extenders (dos4g/dos4gw/pmode/dos32/cwsdpmi) tend to perform better with more ram. emulators, like dos mame is an example.

[Japo]

i have not encountered the 32mb barrier so far but i have seen apps that keel over with more than 620kb base memory. any apps/games that use dos extenders (dos4g/dos4gw/pmode/dos32/cwsdpmi) tend to perform better with more ram. emulators, like dos mame is an example.

I have seen games crash in DOSBox if too much memory was enabled, then work fine if reduced. When the problem is too much conventional memory use the "loadfix" command--probably you already knew. In protected mode apps don't see different kinds of memory, I think.

[tikbalang]

i'd like to correct myself a bit (although i have not experimented enough to verify this).

msdos622 can have xms3 support if an xms3 driver is used. the himem.sys that came with it only support xms2, so the likely candidates are himem.sys from msdos71 or pcdos71, himemx/jemmex by japheth, or xmgr by jrellis.

*pcdos71 supports fat32 and is available from ibm website as part of its "IBM ServerGuide Scripting Toolkit, DOS Edition, version 1.3.07". it came after pcdos2000 (pcdos7 rev1).