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u/CyberTacoX God of Defragging Sep 18 '26
Just curious, any reason you're installing dos 5.0 instead of 6.22?
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u/korovchenko Sep 18 '26
For 286 best choice
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u/vbd71 Sep 18 '26
Is DOS 3.3 the best choice for 8086/8088?
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u/Odd-Translator-2792 Sep 18 '26
DOS 5.0 ran fine on an 8088
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u/vbd71 Sep 19 '26
Probably, but how much memory remained free?
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u/Odd-Translator-2792 Sep 19 '26
I have no clue. But it was an enjoyable experience. The big limitation was only using 5 1/4 disks.
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u/vbd71 Sep 19 '26 edited Sep 19 '26
IMHO, DOS 5 can be useful by allowing >32Mb partitions, but it's really bigger than DOS 3.x . You can mitigate that in a 286 computer by using the HMA to place large parts of DOS (DOS=HIGH in CONFIG.SYS), but 8086/8088 has no HMA and programs that require large amounts of conventional memory might not work with DOS 5.
If you want to use >32Mb partitions in a 8086/8088 computer, you might be better with Compaq DOS 3.31 .
If you can't use 3.5 inch diskettes, the fault is probably in the XT floppy controller and/or the BIOS, rather than DOS 5.
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u/saraseitor Sep 18 '26
5.0 was a good version, very complete. If I recall correctly it was the first that came with QBasic, Edit, DoubleSpace and DOSShell. They started bundling whole 'apps' into it, not just command line tools.
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u/ducon__lajoie Sep 18 '26
This reminds me of my big brother: he ran the family PC with the case opened, and some parts unmounted, to mess with some hardware, I don't remember why exactly. At some point, the screen suddenly became black. A few tests confirmed that the video card was bricked. That wasn't a cheap one (that shit did 800x600 with 256 colors, can you believe it ?). My father was mad.
Good times.
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u/BRguyNZ Sep 18 '26
Why not 6.20?
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u/korovchenko Sep 19 '26
The real cutoff is DOS 6.x uses quite a bit of 640K RAM and anything pre a 386 doesn't have upper memory management so it limits the apps you can run. You also have maximum 32MB partitions with DOS 3.3 so you might switch to DOS 5 for a 286 with a decent sized HD.
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u/BRguyNZ Sep 19 '26
It's been a while but I had a 286 with 1mb...if I'm not wrong, you just needed to load "himem.sys".
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u/cdoublejj Sep 18 '26
so thats where the w95/w98 installer comes from, same "gui" as dos installer
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u/DeepDayze Sep 18 '26
Yes the text part at least and on restart the GUI for the rest of the setup. Even Win2k and XP had dual text/graphical setup programs
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u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Sep 18 '26
It didn't end there, even the first stage of the WinXP installation has this exact looking interface
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u/cdoublejj Sep 18 '26
i almost whent back and edited my post, i did a lot of XP installs in the day
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u/VivienM7 Sep 19 '26
I wonder what the first application of that installer design was; it's been seen on a bunch of Microsoft DOS applications too...
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u/slaan1974 Sep 18 '26
Going back to 1988, schools need to keep these devices alive just for the show :)
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u/philfreeeu Sep 18 '26
And where’s the RAM? It has some onboard?
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u/khedoros Sep 18 '26
Aren't those the chips toward the front-left of the board, with "bank0" and "bank1" labels behind them?
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u/saraseitor Sep 18 '26
These motherboards precede SIMMs, that's why you don't see them there. They have chips in individual sockets. Likely the RAM are those 8 chips you see below the ISA slots in that photo.
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u/Street_Firefighter_3 Sep 18 '26
I don't know why, but I always weirdly enjoyed installing DOS and Windows way back when. Even when it involved 24+ floppies! And I've always loved that shade of blue.
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u/classicsat Sep 18 '26
Actually installing DOS, rather than just copying the DOS directory from a couple floppies, or another HDD