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Tossed together a DOS box

TCPMetaTCPMeta
edited April 2015 in Hardware
Bought a computer from the thrift store a week ago and decided to toss on DOS. The system already had MS-DOS 6.22 but since it has a 40GB hard drive and shockingly 1GB of RAM I tossed on DOS 7.1.

For kicks I tossed on my old Zip 100 drive to use as a backup solution. I found a packet driver for the built-in NIC so I can get rid of the NE2000 clone that was in it.

Right now im trying to optimize the conventional memory. Found a few programs that will let me load and unload TSR drivers while its running so I can selectively load and unload the CD drivers at will.

Comments

  • dosboxdosbox
    what kind of CPU does it have?
  • psychobatpsychobat
    Sounds nice, but as dosbox asked, what does it have for a CPU?

    Also, did you get it from a big name thrift store or a mom and pop and how much were they charging?
  • TCPMetaTCPMeta
    Was a small private owned thrift store.

    P4 at 3GHz. Got it for 25 bucks. I thought it was a POS server due to the labels that were all over it but it was a database server for a blood "donation" clinic. The harddrive wasn't reformated and still had client info such as names, blood types, UOM and how much the client got for their "donation". It had DOS 6.22, dBase III, FoxPro 2.6, Bunch of DOS USB software, LapLink3, PCAnyWhere, Direct Access 5.1 and tons of custom BATCH files that made everything work together called DPS3.

    I tried to dual boot the system with Linux but for some odd reason it locks up when it tries to load the kernel. However Debian's installer CD works fine. I even tried a few random Live CDs and same issue, locks up when it tries to load the kernel. Must be some kind of special syntax im missing.
  • TCPMetaTCPMeta
    Well I finally got it to dual boot BSD. Running FreeBSD on it. For laughs and to see if it was doable I tossed on the little program called screen and DOSEmu. Basically I used them to make MS-DOS 6.22 run as a multiuser environment. Four or more nodes if I wanted using 64MB of ram and all booting from 20MB drive images with a virtual network to map a single 2GB partition. Kinda cool really.
  • nt_5nt_5
    If it boots from usb, you may make a DOS boot stick (or a boot CD)
  • TCPMetaTCPMeta
    That's what I did to install DOS 7.1 and also a custom DOS 6.22 install. Since I didn't have any blank CDs on hand and one Zip drive handy I went with USB.
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