I wish I had more time for
retro computers. Since my last post, I've been building 486DX2/66
system using spare parts I already have. When it is complete, I plan
to try to sell it in Finnish auction site called huuto.net. To be
honest, I don't actually expect anyone to buy it from there, at least
not with the price I'm thinking of (it is going to be very nice
system). I've never sold anything on ebay so maybe it is time to try
although I fear postage might scare potential buyers off.
I'll tell more about the
system when it is complete (and all the problems I've faced so far)
but it is going to have a microdrive (I prefer those over CF cards)
for easy and fast way to transfer files between it and modern system.
So the system is going to have XTIDE Universal BIOS in it and I also
plan to install DOS and old commercial games that are now released as
freeware along with popular shareware games.
Since I'm going to sell
the system, I just can't install any DOS no matter how old they are
now. I would have liked to install PC DOS 2000 (100% compatible with
MS-DOS 6.22 but more optimized with extra features) but the only
option now is FreeDOS since it can be distributed free. I'm
installing version 1.1 that is the latest.
I've been testing XTIDE
Universal BIOS with FreeDOS boot disks but I've never installed whole
FreeDOS. For those that do not know, FreeDOS is meant for more modern
systems and so it may not be a perfect choice for retro gaming.
There is 8088/8086 compatible kernel so it can be used even on oldest
PCs but you'll likely need to customize your own version for 16 bit
systems. There might be unexpected problems. For example I was able
to boot my 286 with FreeDOS boot disk but it always froze when I
tried to boot from hard drive. I was able to make 486 system bootable
with the very same boot disk without any problems.
For retro gaming purposes
FreeDOS has one great benefit over PC DOS 2000: FAT32 support. You
won't need it unless you use out of era hard disks (I have 120 GB
drive on my 286) but if you do, you'll no doubt want to access more
than 8 GB and don't want to be limited to 2 GB FAT16 partitions.
MS-DOS 7 (Windows 9x) has
FAT32 support but MS-DOS 7 requires 386 or better. PC DOS 7.10 works
on 16-bit systems and also supports FAT32 but 7.10 is only available
as boot disks. I found a collection of PC DOS 7.10 boot disks
(different builds) and tried to install them over PC DOS 2000. It
worked but every build had the very same problem: himem.sys consumed
lots of conventional memory, many times more that it did with PC DOS
2000.
I eventually came to the
conclusion that FAT32 is not that important for XT and 286 systems
and I'm going to replace the 120 GB drive from my 286 system next
time I open it. For 386 and later you can choose between MS-DOS 7 and
FreeDOS and I recommend to at least try FreeDOS.
But for the 486DX2 system
I'm building it was damn hard to install using official CD image for
the FreeDOS 1.1 distribution. The CD is bootable but this old 486
does not support boot from CD-ROM. The CD contains setup.bat so
booting from CD should not be needed. Well, the setup froze when I
used MS-DOS 6.22 boot disk. Setup also failed with the FreeDOS boot
disk I already had. All I got was out of environment space errors. I
had to examine install documentation to find that setup requires 2k
environment space to be set.
FreeDOS installed
perfectly on my Pentium system (that was able to boot from CD). I
tried to create install boot disk using it but it did not work much
better. There was always something preventing the install. Finally I
used the Pentium system to install FreeDOS and then moved the
microdrive back to the 486.
