Installation MS-DOS 6.22

[patio]

As per usual Geek's headline Post is mis-leading...

[OldTimeCoder]

I've had no issues booting FreeDOS on a Core i7 4770K with 32GB of Memory, but FreeDOS is limited to 4GB total address space as it doesn't support PAE.

Even on MS-DOS 6.22 I don't see any reason to use Quarterdeck's program. HIMEM.SYS is sufficient for XMS memory services, and EMM386 works well enough if you want to expose the 64KB HMA as UMB for DOS to use. I suppose it could be a consideration if you make heavy use of programs that use expanded memory, though I'm uncertain what QEMM even provides in that context.

The limit of HIMEM.SYS is why anyone would use QEMM. Even back in the later 80s when expanded and extended memory was available it allowed extensive use of as much RAM for you to use. Now back then when your average machine was somewhere around 8 to 16 mhz compiling and linking took several hours but if you load your source, set temp, and load your compiler and linking up in a fast ram disk you cut your time almost in half. Also back then you did not have HIMEM.SYS to use, Also back then I ran a multi-node BBS on an old IBM-PC with an AST 6-pak expanded memory card loaded with 16meg of RAM. 3 windows for the BBS and one I used for maintenance. I used it through Win98.

I guess if you never have used it you would not know some of the advantages of it.

[OldTimeCoder]

I did a search on ebay and yep you can buy 6.22. But these are on floppies, some on 5.25" floppies. Floppies are magnetic disks, and they do not last a life time, fact is 2 years is stretching it if they are never used. Also you have no idea how or where they were stored since any thing magnetic will erase them in a heartbeat.

The product id was just that a product key, you did not enter it to make it work. The ID really was to go with the computer it was installed on. I built many a dos machine and packaged the manual with the machine, and never put in any ID.

Also my original floppies are trash, but several years ago before they went dead I created a boot CD with 6.22 and copied the files to the CD. If, and it has several times in its life, were to die I can easily reload DOS. I did the same with my Win4WG 3.11 and those original floppies are also dead now.

[foxidrive]

I triple boot on this machine MS-DOS, Linux, and WinXP.

Virtual machines is what I use these days. 

Booting a physical machine is ok if you have hardware requirements that need a real OS, or have some program that can't be made to run in a VM - but the convenience of a virtual OS is magic.