Experiment with MS-DOS 5.00
Experiment with MS-DOS 5.00
Hey Guys, around 5 minutes ago i got to know that you can boot from a vhd,img,iso,etc using EasyBCD,im doing a project in which ive successfully been able to boot MSDOS Version 5.00,now my questing is,can i create a FAT16 Partition on my drive and have DOS 5 Detec it ( I dont want to wipe the drive and even if i could dos cannot used 120 GB)then go to my dos 5 entry of that fdd img i added and do fdisk and all that and do sys c: and have it work? Thanks
It's interesting to consider the value of MSDOS in today's context.
I'm someone who enjoys using DOS applications and older Windows versions, even though I'm working on a C2D with a core 2 duo and an SSD. It's better for real hardware than emulation, so the story is, I made a 2 GB partition and used fdisk in dos 5.6.22. It doesn't seem to recognize it. Now in Neosmat EasyBCD I need to indicate where my DOS partition is located, but it says it will find it automatically. I don’t have a choice. Also, specifying the drive in the advanced options doesn’t help—I often end up in a grub loader, which is similar to command.com. If you can help, that would be really appreciated.
MSDOS worked with a "master boot record" or MBR. I recall that older versions wouldn’t recognize a 2 gigabyte partition, though I’m not certain. There was no FAT32 file system—only FAT16. I remember needing to perform a low-level format, but it’s unclear whether this happened before or after using "FDISK." It seems the drive started as Drive C: because both A and B letters were reserved for floppies. The process didn’t seem straightforward, and opening a DOS environment inside Windows might have helped. I also tried that a few years ago with old games stored in the garage, but they just failed to boot. Good luck with your project!
I’ve gathered some insights from my experience with retro DOS gaming. On today’s systems, using a virtual machine is often better than running DOS on a real partition. Here are the key points: FDISK is the tool for creating partitions in DOS. You don’t just create a partition and then use FDISK—you start with FDISK to make partitions, then format them. Most modern systems can’t run MBR, which was used until Windows XP; newer drives usually use GPT partitions. Windows XP didn’t include a boot manager that supports multiple OSes, so you’d need work arounds like separate hard drives and BIOS boot menus. Running DOS 6 or 7 might be more practical because they support FAT32, which is useful for older games and software. If you’re on very old hardware, it’s worth giving it a try, but unless you have genuine DOS hardware, a VM would be a better choice.