Re: Thin client PC to run MS-DOS
By: Denn to Lordwoodoo on Mon Nov 24 2025 01:03 pm

Yes I realize that :) not sure if I'm going to install MS-DOS 6.22 or windows 95.

Well, I would suggest to install both, and even Windows 3.1 on the MSDOS partition is a cool thing. I will explain why later. It is always good to have a pure MSDOS. In that case, you need to part the hard drive in 2 partitions. One for MSDOS, 2 gb max, and the second to install Windows 95. See the max capacity limit for Windows 95, and if the hard drive have more space after that, you will have more space to create one more partition for data for exemple: games or software, etc.. for Windows 95. A very important thing is: you need to create 2 primary partitions to be able to boot both!! Before doing the installs. FDISK or Partition Manager will do the trick using a floppy drive or a CDRom device.

Installing Win 3.1 on the MSDOS partition does not affect the previous MSDOS installed, and its cool if you want to boot Win 3.1 and use MSDOS in windowed mode over it. You can take notes with notepad, for exemple playing Zork.. have multiple MSDOS windows opened, etc.. Really cool!

I made a machine like that and its my fav for retro things. I installed Windows XP instead of Windows 95.

Note: Windows 95 will read the MSDOS partition but MSDOS will not read the Windows 95 one. Depending of what format used: fat16 or fat32 and MSDOS size limit. See online for more details about it.

Well, do your own experiments!! :)
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Re: Thin client PC to run MS-DOS
By: Denn to Lordwoodoo on Mon Nov 24 2025 01:03 pm

Well, I would suggest to install both, and even Windows 3.1 on the MSDOS partition is a cool thing. I will explain why later. It is always good to have a pure MSDOS. In that case, you need to part the hard drive in 2 partitions. One for MSDOS, 2 gb max, and the second to install Windows 95. See the max capacity limit for Windows 95, and if the hard drive have more space after that, you will have more space to create one more partition for data for exemple: games or software, etc.. for Windows 95. A very important thing is: you need to create 2 primary partitions to be able to boot both!! Before doing the installs. FDISK or Partition Manager will do the trick using a floppy drive or a CDRom device.

Installing Win 3.1 on the MSDOS partition does not affect the previous MSDOS installed, and its cool if you want to boot Win 3.1 and use MSDOS in windowed mode over it. You can take notes with notepad, for exemple playing Zork.. have multiple MSDOS windows opened, etc.. Really cool!

I'm leaning towards just installing DOS 6.22.
I Remember when Windows 3.0 came out, i bought it and then I upgraded to 3.1, never really liked those 2 versions, they were basically DOS shells, in dos I used a program called xtree.

I remember my 1st DOS machine, it had a whopping 20 mb hard drive. Then I bough my 386 sx that had 40 mb hard drive.

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Re: Thin client PC to run MS-DOS
By: Denn to Lordwoodoo on Tue Nov 25 2025 01:19 pm

I'm leaning towards just installing DOS 6.22. I Remember when Windows 3.0 came out, i bought it and then I upgraded to 3.1, never really liked those 2 versions, they were basically DOS shells, in dos I used a program called xtree.

After Windows 3.0 came out, I think some programs came out that were specifically for Windows 3.x, so you basically had to use Windows to run them. I think especially things like graphical & drawing tools, word processors, etc. moved toward Windows because (I think) drawing programs were probably easier to develop for Windows 3.x than for DOS, and with word processors, you could get WYSIWYG interfaces, so it was a lot easier to create documents just as they'd appear when you print them, compared to DOS software.

Nightfox

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Re: Thin client PC to run MS-DOS
By: Nightfox to Denn on Tue Nov 25 2025 02:32 pm

After Windows 3.0 came out, I think some programs came out that were specifically for Windows 3.x, so you basically had to use Windows to run the

Productivity software in those days was horrible, for me. Maybe it's just because I always had older and slower machines, but I stuck with text-based word processor (WordPerfect 5.1) for quite a long time. The only WYSIWYG one I liked was Word for Mac because you could turn off all those awful toolbars and make your window just your text. The problem with that, though, was that Macs sucked balls and would crash if you breathed wrong, so you always ended up losing unsaved parts of your document.

I still don't really like most GUI word processors, but they're definitely a lot better these days. Abiword was pretty good at one point, I wonder if that one is still actively worked on. It was decently fast, and had Word Doc support.

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Nightfox wrote to Denn <=-

After Windows 3.0 came out, I think some programs came out that were specifically for Windows 3.x, so you basically had to use Windows to
run them. I think especially things like graphical & drawing tools,
word processors, etc. moved toward Windows because (I think) drawing programs were probably easier to develop for Windows 3.x than for DOS,
and with word processors, you could get WYSIWYG interfaces, so it was a lot easier to create documents just as they'd appear when you print
them, compared to DOS software.

That was about the time I started in DOS/Windows technical support. I
remember seeing people be able to sit in front of Microsoft Word and
write a memo without any training. WordPerfect came with keyboard
overlays with all the commands on them.

We had one person who insisted on WP, and our finance team swore by
1-2-3. Excel wasn't quite ready for Prime Time yet.



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Re: Thin client PC to run MS-DOS
By: Nightfox to Lordwoodoo on Wed Nov 26 2025 10:25 am

I think Xtree was one of the most popular DOS utilities that was available at the time..

Maybe depending from where you are in the world. Because I dont remember Xtree. I will try it this week! Thanks.
I used and use Volkov Commander. Norton have one if I remember well.
Or even Desqview.

But for real multitasking with real MSDOS, Win 3.1 with a Windowed MSDOS over it is the best for me. My exemple was: you are playing Zork over MSDOS and you want to takes notes with Notepad at the same time. Desqview is really a cool thing but eating all the memory.

Regards,
.: Lord Woodoo :.
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Re: Thin client PC to run MS-DOS
By: Nightfox to Denn on Tue Nov 25 2025 02:32 pm

After Windows 3.0 came out, I think some programs came out that were specifically for Windows 3.x, so you basically had to use Windows to run them. I think especially things like graphical & drawing tools, word

Excel was the big one for me.
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Re: Thin client PC to run MS-DOS
By: Nightfox to Lordwoodoo on Wed Nov 26 2025 10:25 am

I will look into Xtree. Dont know it.

I think Xtree was one of the most popular DOS utilities that was available at the time..

I know it was probably my most-used utility back in my DOS days...

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Re: Re: Thin client PC to run MS-DOS
By: poindexter FORTRAN to phigan on Sat Nov 29 2025 10:10 am

To me, it was a Window manager before we had window managers. For a
time, the last line of my autoexec was to run Xtree.

Ha! Now that you mention it, I knew a bunch of people that did that. Personally, I felt like I could type a file operation command even with full paths faster than I could arrow around and select things from a menu.

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Re: Re: Thin client PC to run MS-DOS
By: Lonewolf to Gamgee on Sat Nov 29 2025 07:21 pm

today, that and QEdit (file editor) and a LIST clone called LOOK.COM

What features does 'look' bring?

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Re: Thin client PC to run MS-DOS
By: phigan to Bf2k+ on Fri Nov 28 2025 09:14 pm

I know it was probably my most-used utility back in my DOS days...

Man, so many people were all about xtree gold..

I don't remember using XTree Gold... I remember the original Xtree. I remember I could do almost anything to a file with it.

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Re: Thin client PC to run MS-DOS
By: Nightfox to phigan on Fri Nov 28 2025 09:25 pm

I didn't know any DOS command shell had tab completion.. I had even used 4DOS sometimes..

I used 4DOS on all my machines for a while... including my BBS boxes.
I never ran a Windows BBS back in the day... I don't think they existed back then.

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Re: Re: Thin client PC to run MS-DOS
By: phigan to Lonewolf on Tue Dec 02 2025 03:18 am

today, that and QEdit (file editor) and a LIST clone called LOOK.COM

What features does 'look' bring?

I use Look (L.COM) to quickly navigate around directories and view file contents. What's nice about Look is that you can quickly move around the directories on the drive to get where you are going, while seeing files in the directories and then hit ESC and it drops you off in the the last directory you were LOOKing at. Just a neat tool to have in the Dos Path.

Lonewolf
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Re: Re: Thin client PC to run MS-DOS
By: poindexter FORTRAN to phigan on Tue Dec 02 2025 07:13 am

Most apps put themselves in the same directory name as the executable. A crafty sort would write a batch file called go.bat that read:

I did stuff like that for a bit and then the OCD in me got pissed at all the extra files laying about so I deleted them.

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phigan wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Most apps put themselves in the same directory name as the executable. A crafty sort would write a batch file called go.bat that read:

I did stuff like that for a bit and then the OCD in me got pissed at
all the extra files laying about so I deleted them.

You'd only need one batch file - using command line variables, it'd take
the first argument on the command line, change directory to the
directory named %1, then run the command %1.

go, "go procomm" would be the same as running:

cd \procomm
procomm

type in "go telix" and it'd run:

cd \telix
telix



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Re: Re: Thin client PC to run MS-DOS
By: poindexter FORTRAN to phigan on Sat Dec 06 2025 11:32 am

Subject: Re: Thin client PC to run MS-DOS
@MSGID: <693484C2.202.dove.hardware@realitycheckbbs.org>
@REPLY: <693370AB.1247.dove-hwswhelp@tacopronto.bbs.io>
@TZ: 41e0

phigan wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Most apps put themselves in the same directory name as the executable. A crafty sort would write a batch file called go.bat that read:

I did stuff like that for a bit and then the OCD in me got pissed at all the extra files laying about so I deleted them.

You'd only need one batch file - using command line variables, it'd take
the first argument on the command line, change directory to the
directory named %1, then run the command %1.

go, "go procomm" would be the same as running:

cd \procomm
procomm

type in "go telix" and it'd run:

cd \telix
telix

Or just put \procomm and \telix in your search PATH. Most of those programs were smart enough to be able to find their config/data files based on argv[0] and didn't really need the current working directory to be "their" directory upon invocation.
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Re: Re: Thin client PC to run MS-DOS
By: poindexter FORTRAN to phigan on Sat Dec 06 2025 11:32 am

You'd only need one batch file - using command line variables, it'd take

True that, but didn't think about it at the time. Probably would've made me a lazier typer anyway ;). These days while on video calls working with people, they're like "onoez! we can't copy/paste this long path into this web based terminal!" and before they're even done complaining about it, I've typed it in and gone on to the next step of whatever we're doing.

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Digital Man wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Or just put \procomm and \telix in your search PATH. Most of those programs were smart enough to be able to find their config/data files based on argv[0] and didn't really need the current working directory
to be "their" directory upon invocation. --

Now, he tells me!

:)





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phigan wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

True that, but didn't think about it at the time. Probably would've
made me a lazier typer anyway ;). These days while on video calls
working with people, they're like "onoez! we can't copy/paste this long path into this web based terminal!" and before they're even done complaining about it, I've typed it in and gone on to the next step of whatever we're doing.

Ever see someone swipe your credit card and fail 10 times when they
could have just typed in the number in less time?



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