Smack2k
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Recommended DOS Versions
- Thread starter Smack2k
- Start date
Mau1wurf1977
Experienced Member
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2010
- Messages
- 171
DOS doesn't stop at 6.22There's also PC DOS 6.3, 7.0, and 2000.
There is also MS-DOS 7.0 and 7.1.
I use 7.1 a lot because of FAT32. It uses more memory compared to MS-DOS 6.22 but not by much.
vwestlife
Veteran Member
There's also MS-DOS 8.0 contained within Windows ME, although its functionality was much more limited than previous versions, so it's not really usable on its own.
IBM's PC DOS 7.1 also supports FAT32. It was not officially released on its own, but PC DOS 7.1 was included with Norton Ghost and the IBM ServerGuide Scripting Toolkit.
DR-DOS 7.04 and higher support FAT32 as well.
Trixter
Veteran Member
It's my understanding that all of the DOS version that support FAT32 don't work on 808x systems. I'd love to be proven wrong and/or given a link to a bootable image I can try on my own 808x machines...
Stone
10k Member
You are correct. Furthermore, they don't work on 80286 systems, either. If you want an image of a FAT32 boot disk I can help with that.
Trixter
Veteran Member
There's no point if it can't benefit my sub-386 systems, but thank you for offering. I'll continue to create multiple 2G partitions on large media.
smeezekitty
Experienced Member
If I may ask what do you need FAT32 on 8088-80286 systems anyway?
luvit
Experienced Member
There's users here with partitions larger than 2GB. Especially with products like XT-CF or XT-IDE.
Stone
10k Member
Which immediately begs the question... why do you need a >2GB partition on an 8088 system?
Plus, do you realize that it takes a looooong time for the prompt to return after issuing a DIR (or similar) command on a partition that large on an XT? It's over a minute, and maybe two or three minutes of wait time. And that's just for 2GB. Now that's something to look forward to.
luvit
Experienced Member
...it takes a looooong time for the prompt to return after issuing a DIR (or similar) command on a partition that large on an XT? It's over a minute, and maybe two or three minutes of wait time. And that's just for 2GB. Now that's something to look forward to.
lol. i didn't know that. i;ve always intended to stick with my original fixed disks, that;s good info to know.Stone
10k Member
Ya', the directory listing comes up normally. But calculating the free space left seems to be a real chore and takes nearly forever for the 8088.
smeezekitty
Experienced Member
Yeah but...why?
I mean for a system with such little CPU and RAM that is far more data storage than it seems feasible to use. Even a few hundred megs seems like more than enough
386/486s that can run Win9x+ it makes sense to have gigabyte size partitions.
luvit
Experienced Member
i don't know. i agree. i always assumed they still formatted every MB of drive space for usage even though they couldn't fill it.
i don't pay attention to the CF threads since i'm not interested. from what stone said, my perception of the CF crowd and using FAT32 has to be wrong.
i don't pay attention to the CF threads since i'm not interested. from what stone said, my perception of the CF crowd and using FAT32 has to be wrong.
Stone
10k Member
CF and FAT32 are both great. But you can't use FAT32 on an 8088 (or an 80286). It requires 80386 or better.
krebizfan
Veteran Member
There is an alternate FreeDOS kernel that supports FAT32 on an 8088. The standard FAT32 drive format would have the FAT cover 4-8MB for 8-64GB drives. Better have a large capacity EMS card or spend a lot of time waiting. Calculating free space on a heavily used 2 TB drive will take a while; just think how long it will take an 8088 to go through 256MB and count all the zeroes.
Stone
10k Member
Trixter
Veteran Member
It doesn't take that long; it's about 17 seconds on a PC/XT, which is spent determining the amount of free space. It takes a full minute only on a PCjr+jrIDE due to DOS memory structures being forced in the first 128KB of RAM which is slower than normal.
Also, it's only the first invocation of DIR; after that they all return quickly. If it bothers you, put a DIR in your AUTOEXEC.BAT so that it's already taken care of when the system is done booting.
Be careful with that. The pause happens any time that DOS decides it needs to refresh its data. I've had this pause happen multiple times after it had presumably computed the data the first time.
Mike
Stone
10k Member
Thanks for reaffirming what I knew I had already observed before. I also found it took 25 seconds and not 17 seconds on my 5160 with a 128MB flash drive.
Trixter
Veteran Member
At a straight DOS prompt, the behavior is 100% predictable. If you run programs that issue DOS function calls that perform absolute reads/writes (INT 25h/26h), or anything else DOS feels may have modified anything outside of its control, DOS marks the free space variable as "dirty" and it is recalculated the next time it is needed. So, this is common:
DIR (slow)
DIR (fast)
DIR (fast)
...
DIR (fast)
CHKDSK C:
DIR (slow)