system requirements for ms-dos 6.22

[DManly]

looking for the minimal system requirements for ms-dos 6.22. Thanks

[kwai]

well, i checked the manual, but it doesn't list system requirements per se... the slowest systems they list for troubleshooting are 386 machines. probably need 4mb or ram, no hd (since it'll run on floppies).

you'd have to really search the rummage sales to find something dos 6.22 wouldn't run on. why, whatcha got?

[DManly]

Well, I have an old XT 8088 640k, 20 meg HD that I was looking to upgrade from the PC DOS 3.1 that it had, (I have MS DOS 6.22, but no manual) I know that MS DOS at least thru 6.0 will run on that platform since I have a origional box for it, but really wanted to go for broke with 6.22. Thanks for the reply though

Of course I could give up on this museum piece....

[CMonster]

Do you have DOS 6.22 running on anything? Why don't you make a boot disk and see what happens. Push come to shove you could throw disk #1 in there and see what happens - I bet if it doesn't meet the minimum requirements it wont even install.

I have no experience with those 8088 Studebaker computers, but my guess is you will need a minimum of an 80286 processor to fully run DOS 6.22.

By the way - I too have an uncanny interest in those type of "antiques." I have recently come by an incredible 12mhz 286 - it was in a phone mail unit and has 8MB of ram (eight 1MB SIMMS - which was rare for a 286) the board has a date of 1990 on it, and the BIOS has a 4 digit date field good to the year 2099 - of course no OS that will run on it is Y2K compliant but that is another story. this baby will even run Windows 3.1.

[DavidX]

CMonster - like you, I also have this strange fascination with 'antique' ('vintage'?) computers and driving them to the limits of their capabilities. They can be quite surprising!

I have a 286 with motherboard and BIOS dated 1988. No SIMMs, just 1Mb RAM soldered on the mobo. Managed to find an old ISA memory card and boosted RAM to a total 2.5Mb. EGA graphics integrated on mobo so I also slapped in an old ISA VGA card. Added an antique SoundBlaster as well.

It runs DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 perfectly and surprisingly fast. Yet I've heard people say you can't run Windows 3.1 properly on a 286. Total nonsense! Yes, it only runs in 'Standard Mode' but so what? No big deal. It certainly runs at a reasonable speed.
It even runs - wait for it! - 3D games! Dug out some ancient DOS favourites like 'Catacomb Abyss' and 'Wolfenstein 3D' and they run fine.

BTW - beat THIS for age: I also have a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I, introduced in 1977! It ran at a mind-blowing 1.77MHz and came with 4Kb (yes, that's KILObytes) of memory. Haven't got it running yet - but I'm working on it. I have this strong feeling that ANY version of Windows would be a little too much though! (In fact, of course, it's not really PC compatible.) Makes an 8088 seem like a Pentium III.

As to the original question: I haven't tried it but I strongly suspect that an 8088 WILL run DOS 6.22 although, as you said, it might not be able to 'fully' take advantage of all the capabilities.

David

[CMonster]

All right! Good to hear it David

[DManly]

Thanks for all the thoughts! Yes, it does seem to be a strange facination to see what these old computers will do. But I do imagine there could be much worse hobbies

Now, as to another question, I am looking for a 720k 3.5" floppy drive. Any one have any idea as to where to find one of these? The XT does not support high density drives

Another thought, has anyone ever seen a 10baseT 8bit ethernet card? I sure would like to get this thing into the network (I did have it hooked directly up to my HP lazer jet, and it worked great, that raised a few eyebrows around here!

Thanks again all

[Harvey]

DManly -- DOS 6.22 will run on well on a 286. If it's a small machine, and you don't intend to run windows, you can minimize the space by nuking any file in the DOS directory called, MW*.*. Also, nuke anything related to DRVSPACE/DBLSPACE.

If you're going to add Win 3.11, for a real treat, get a copy of QEMM, v7.53 or later and replace SMARTDRV disk cache with HYPERDISK. Then you will need more RAM (>4 MB).

For DOS only operation, you can run on a couple of MB of RAM (or less, depending on what you're doing).

Here's a speed-up trick for real slow machines -- Set up a small RAM disk, copy COMMAND.COM and frequently used batch files to it, and make it the first listing in your path.

If you're going to install Windows, get Ver. 3.11.

IMHO, DOS the second version of 3.30 (yes, there are two incompatible versions) and DOS 6.22 are the best versions they ever made.

[This message has been edited by Harvey (edited 03-03-99).]

[Johan]

I also have an 8086 XT and it a supports 3.5" 1.44 MB floppy drive, if you set it up in the bios On my machine it's ctrl+alt+escape, floppy drive b, 1.44 mb, end then reboot. So i think you don't need a 720 k drive.