Dos 7

[Scott Hauser]

I found the following link to DOS 7.10 a few days ago.
<LINK REMOVED BY ADMIN>

I downloaded it and tested it on my EEE PC. Be forewarned that the install cd doesn't allow you to run fdisk on your drive of choice. IOW, it will install itself to the default boot drive set in BIOS. I bricked XANDROS on the EEE with try number one. Fortunately for me, I don't save my data on the SSD. I downloaded the floppy images too, but haven't played with them yet. I hope the install program is more like DOS 6.22.

I had been using DOS 6.22, Win 3.11 Workgroups and all of my favorite DOS and Legacy Win apps on a bootable SDHC with the EEE with only a few problems, such as DOS 6.22 not recognizing other jump drives, etc. DOS 7.10 recognizes all jump drives that are connected at boot time. It also supports LFN.

So far the only down side is corrupting the 3.11 swap file more frequently than 6.22, however that seems to be a SDHC issue.

Booted from the EEE via SDHC, it is roughly 4 seconds to the DOS prompt. From the DOS prompt to Win 3.11 desktop is roughly 3 seconds.

[Mel Bishop]

Downloaded and will install on a spare machine shortly. Couldn't find anything about it being multi-tasking. Yea/Nay?

Going to break out my PB/DOS again and start doing some more DOS programming.

Thanks a million for the link.

Got to wondering: Why would m$ release this now (at all)....free download...I thought their bucks was in vista....Free download? Something seems to be in the wind....Hmmm....

Added: Page updated on: Sep 9, 2005 (on their download page). Maybe it's not so "new" after all. Still.......

[Steve Rossell]

That is the copyrighted MS DOS. I am not sure of legality of distributing MS DOS, so I removed the link.

[jcfuller]

Mel,
I've been using DosBox lately with PBDos . No problems so far.

James

[Steve Rossell]

I contacted Microsoft and this is not legal. MS DOS (all versions) is copyrighted and cannot be distributed.

[Mel Bishop]

Shuud've realized that. Oh well. One can dream-n-scheme I guess. Wasted bandwidth.

[Scott Hauser]

I contacted Microsoft and this is not legal. MS DOS (all versions) is copyrighted and cannot be distributed.

First off, I would like to apologize for the post, my bad. I googled it first before posting and most of the links stated that it was legal if you owned a Win 95 dos legal copy.

Steve, could you provide us with your contact at Microsoft? I would be delighted to obtain a license for this. In the mean time, I guess it is back to 6.22.

Edit-- found this, curious that MS isn't posting legal warnings on their site:
http://www.microsoft.com/communities...=en-us&m=1&p=1

For more see:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&n...icrosoft+DOS+7

[Steve Rossell]

I called the Microsoft Anti-Piracy Hotline at (800) RU-LEGIT and asked the person on the other end if was legal to download a copy of MS DOS. She did not know. I was then transfered to another department and told them the whole story about a link to <such and such> being in our forums to download MS DOS 7.10 and asked if this was legal. I was put on hold for about two minutes and then was told that this website has no legal authority to distribute Microsoft products.

You maybe correct about this being ok if you have a current license, but this is not something that I want to take a chance with.

[Mel Bishop]

Maybe m$ should get coordinated. I downloaded their DOS 6.22 right off their own web site...Free...or maybe it was 6.22 upgrade...Can't remember.

[Erich Schulman]

If you want a legal DOS 7, you can try to find an extant mirror of Caldera OpenDOS 7. The successor of Novell DOS 7, it supports multitasking but has limited Win3 support. (If allowed, I can upload the original floppy images to this site.) EDR DOS is a fork descending from the Caldera source and is somewhat actively being maintained. And then there's FreeDOS.

I have also seen copies of IBM's PC-DOS 2000 for sale on a certain major auction site.

[Scott Hauser]

You maybe correct about this being ok if you have a current license, but this is not something that I want to take a chance with.

Thanks Steve and I agree. I will see what I can find out. I have spent the better part of two hours following my initial post, surfing the MS site looking for info. There is no means to obtain a purchased copy of any of their discontinued products. It's exasperating that a "Corporation for Profit" can sell a product, discontinue it and abandon all support for it and insist everyone on the face of the planet honor their abandoned "Copyright" infinitely.

[Arthur Gomide]

Here in Brazil, Microsoft made available FREE to download the three disks from MS-DOS 6.22, at the launch also free the DOS 2.3 offered by IBM - the discs could be downloaded directly from Microsoft's BBS or, requested via phone, email, letter, sign of smoke and so on.

[John Spikowski]

It's exasperating that a "Corporation for Profit" can sell a product, discontinue it and abandon all support for it and insist everyone on the face of the planet honor their abandoned "Copyright" infinitely.

I refer to this as Microsoft's "Buff & Snuff" policy.

John

[Mike Doty]

You might look at freedos.
http://www.freedos.org

[jcfuller]

You might look at freedos.
http://www.freedos.org

Aren't there problems using pbdos 3.5 (virtual memory) with FreeDos?

James

[Nick Luick]

For those without Windows 98 I would recommend Ebay where you can still get full retail versions for about $40, but beware of flim flam sellers. The bootdisk (backup) is fully functional DOS with basic utitilies. Many may have these bootdisks lying around.

I can't speak for legalities, but there are hundreds of sites offering ZIP downloads of Windows bootdisks.

[Roger Garstang]

I believe the DOS that came with WinME was the latest and last. M$ modified it a little though, but there are sites that have versions where the sys command works, etc...

[Scott Hauser]

Hi Guys,

I do use freedos and like it pretty well. I haven't noted any problems with it and PB32, but I haven't tried it with virtual memory.

The DOS 7.10 has some enhancements over the DOS 6.22 and was alleged to be the latest of the DOS, but never released. That said, I played with Win 98 DOS and found that It would also recognize jump drives. I will test the ME DOS and see if it is closer to 7.10 than 98 DOS. Not interested in installing ME again though. I still have all of my 95, 98 and ME cdroms.

[Mike Doty]

I don't use freedos, but mentioned it in case you were trying to distribute a dos with an application like Spinrite by Gibson Research http://www.grc.com

[Georg Potthast]

Here are instructions to setup Win98 to boot to a DOS 7.0 command prompt:

http://www.ctyme.com/msdos7.htm