DOS | Tech Off | Channel 9

UB hans gunsche

i'm running win xp mce 05 edition on a 160 gig hdd in my notebook and i don't necessarily see myself using that much space. my dos box crapped out and i was thinking of shrinking my windows partition and alloting a small amount to install freedos. in order to do this do i need to install a bootloader? the only time i've ever really used one was running dual boot with linux and windows. if so which is a more recommended boot loader?

ZippyV
Fired Up

Why not use Virtual PC?

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

In reply to ZippyV

#Jun 19th @ 3:31 AM

Crappy performance.

And I don't advise using modern computers to run old (pre-1996) DOS programs, particularly games: games of the time expected SoundBlaster-compatible cards; whilst pretty much every card from 1994 through 2001 was SB compatible with the de-facto standardisation of sound APIs in Windows there's no need to maintain compatibility with the original SoundBlaster; not even Creative's latest cards are compatible with the original SB.

You're better off ebaying for a machine from around 1999 for old-school games and apps, probably cheaper too.

AndyC

In reply to W3bbo

#Jun 19th @ 5:45 AM

Crappy performance???? It's DOS FFS! Even using DOSBox, which is a complete emulator, still runs rings around the fastest DOS machines that were ever actually used.

And, ironically, your arguments against using a modern machine because of hardware issues are precisely the ones I would use to recommend Virtual PC.

UB hans gunsche

my pc doesn't have the efficient hardware for running virtual machine. also alot of people i've talked to said freedos has a good compatability range with newer hardwares. i'm also not really using it for gaming and such and even if i payed some games they wouldn't be graphic extensive.