[Pc_Support] MS-DOS - Win3.11

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Mon, 2005-10-17 at 23:18 -0500, JohnH wrote:
> Stupid Question Time!!!!
> Can MS-DOS & Win3.11 work on any of the machines built within the last 2 or 
> three years?

Yes and no.

> I have not used either of these dinosaurs for years but I have 4 CD's with 
> loads of programs that I would like to use again.
> OK, fine thses programs are severly outdated and maybe even usless, however 
> I am having a nastalgic moment and and would like to go back to the good old 
> days for a while.
> 
> Would DOS/Win see large HD's?

No.  Even MS-DOS 7.1 (Win95B+) has issues with drives larger than 133GB
(128GiB).  It is recommended that you put any MS-DOS 6 partitions in the
first 8.4GB (8GiB) of the disk -- pre-partition _and_ pre-format them as
FAT16.  Using the MS-DOS 6 utilities could screw up the disk geometry.

> I remember a limit of 2MB for dos

MS-DOS versions have a 2GiB FAT16 filesystem limitation using 32KiB
clusters.

[ SIDE NOTE:  NT actually supports creating 4GiB FAT16 filesystems using
64KiB clusters. ]

> which made it hard to copy a lot of ZIP files to be unziped.
> Any sugestions (other then "don't do it") would be greatly appreceated!!!!!

You will want a video card with VESA BIOS Extensions (VBE) 2.0+ support
for maximum compatibility with some applications that support VBE,
including Windows 3.11.  There should be a generic driver for VBE 1.3+
or 2.0+.

Audio support will be virtually impossible.  The last cards and one of
the few PCI-based to support DOS sound with a Real86 driver were the
Ensoniq AudioPCI (ES1370) which is also known as the SoundBlaster
AudioPCI, PCI64, PCI128 and PCI16 (ES1371/ES1373).

ATAPI (e.g., optical drive) support may vary, although most MMC-2+
devices work with most OEM drivers, and the MSCDEX tie into the network
redirector and can provide a drive letter.

I think your best bet might be to buy DR-DOS 8.1 from DeviceLogics (who
purchased the line from Lineo, formerly part of Caldera).
  http://www.drdos.com/products/drdos81.htm  

It has the same lineage as the incredibly compatible DR-DOS 7.0x line,
which could even replace MS-DOS 7.0 in Windows 95/A.  So it should be
quite compatible and capable with Windows 3.11 -- possibly much better
than even Microsoft's own MS-DOS 6.22 (or even MS-DOS 7.x in Windows 4.x
aka "Windows 9x") given Caldera developed DOS Protected Mode Interface
(DPMI) services much father (which "386Enhanced Mode" requires, which is
_still_ the mode used in even Windows 95/98/Me -- long story).

8.x claims to support large disks (although I'm not sure about >133GB).
I had issues supporting disk partitions above 8GiB with DR-DOS 7.03, but
they claim to have broken that in 8.x.

Note, FreeDOS is another option, but it has many, many limitations and
is not nearly as compatible.  I remember there was no redirector support
awhile back, and I think many things are still buggy even today
(although it has become a popular OS for "OEM firmware upgrade disks" to
avoid paying MS-DOS or DR-DOS royalties).  In other words, it isn't
known for its run-time/compatibility features, but makes a fine "bare
minimum" solution.
  http://www.freedos.org/  

BTW, you can still get the DR-DOS 7.03 floppy images from here:   
  http://www.drdos.net/download.htm  

[ NOTE:  The 3-disc "Lite" ("l" prefix) versions don't have Personal
Netware.  The 5-disc versions do include the Personal Netware stack. ]

DR-DOS.ORG and .NET are always good sites for independent info:  
  http://www.drdos.com/  
  http://www.drdos.net/  


-- 
Bryan J. Smith     b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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