Best DOS to use on the Pcjr?

[Tempest]

I'm using my PCjr for running games, what's the best version of DOS to use? I'd guess 3.3 as that was the last officially supported version and the expected version for most games that will run on the jr, but what about using 6.2.2 (properly patched of course)? Is there a point? Do the games that require DOS versions higher than 3.3 even run on the jr?

[jmetal88]

I haven't found a game I wanted to run on the PCjr that wouldn't run on DOS 3.3 (at least I can't recall finding one).

I think DOS 5 is pretty good if you want something newer, or that will support larger partitions. Also useful because it comes with EDIT instead of EDLIN. DOS 6 or higher probably isn't necessary, unless you just want to use it because you already have a copy, and it would be too inconvenient to acquire an older version.

[Tempest]

Can you copy the EDIT command to DOS 3.3 somehow? That would be the only thing I'd miss from later DOS's

[jmetal88]

Can you copy the EDIT command to DOS 3.3 somehow? That would be the only thing I'd miss from later DOS's

I don't think so (I think I got version errors using it below DOS 5), but I found an editor online for older versions of DOS that has comparable features (although it uses function keys instead of menus) called XTED. It works pretty well, for me.

http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Xted

EDIT: Well, I guess it's not so much that it has comparable features, but simply that it has the ability to edit full-screen instead of line by line that makes it sufficient for my uses.

[geoffdaddy]

I know this is an old topic and all, but I figured I'd throw in my two cents and a followup to see what people think. AFAIK, it's pretty much common knowledge to avoid any PC/MS-DOS 4.x due to the bugs in it (what, I'm not sure since I never personally had trouble with it), so that leaves <4 and >5. DOS 5.0 and up will yield more usable conventional memory on newer systems, but I think unless the system will support the HMA and UMA, its memory usage of conventional memory can be worse than earlier ones, isn't that true? I believe from what I've seen and read that 2.11 is the best in terms of memory usage accounting for this, but doesn't have support for multiple disk partitions as on newer DOSes, so maybe 2.11 if you're floppy only, and 3.3 if you're using a hard disk? What advantages do more modern DOSes have for XT class machines?

[jmetal88]

I think for a hard drive, the best version to use is Compaq DOS ver. 3.31. It has larger partition support than regular DOS 3.3. I found a copy of it online a while back if anyone is interested.

[Eric]

I think for a hard drive, the best version to use is Compaq DOS ver. 3.31. It has larger partition support than regular DOS 3.3. I found a copy of it online a while back if anyone is interested.

I'd be interested in that. What's the maximum size per partition?

Edit: Oh, and does it boot directly on PCjr or require any patches?

[jmetal88]

I think for a hard drive, the best version to use is Compaq DOS ver. 3.31. It has larger partition support than regular DOS 3.3. I found a copy of it online a while back if anyone is interested.

I'd be interested in that. What's the maximum size per partition?

Edit: Oh, and does it boot directly on PCjr or require any patches?

Boots just fine on mine. I would assume the maximum partition size is 512MB, but I can't be sure I'm remembering correctly.

Anyway, I have a website where I sometimes host files I don't want to lose, and I mirrored the disk images there:
http://mkgraham.dx.am/pcjr.html

[Eric]

I think for a hard drive, the best version to use is Compaq DOS ver. 3.31. It has larger partition support than regular DOS 3.3. I found a copy of it online a while back if anyone is interested.

I'd be interested in that. What's the maximum size per partition?

Edit: Oh, and does it boot directly on PCjr or require any patches?

Boots just fine on mine. I would assume the maximum partition size is 512MB, but I can't be sure I'm remembering correctly.

Anyway, I have a website where I sometimes host files I don't want to lose, and I mirrored the disk images there:
http://mkgraham.dx.am/pcjr.html

Oh thanks! I grabbed the file and will play around with it when I'm able to.


I've been thinking of using MS-DOS 5 or PC-DOS 5 on my PCjr, but I don't have a 720k floppy drive and I'll probably end up doing some weird stuff to get it patched and installed.
I've been thinking of making a bootable DOS partition on my PCjr's IDE drive, moving the drive to my main PC, making an image of the drive, mounting the image in dosbox, booting from the installation disk images, installing the dos to the hdd image and then put it back onto the drive and expand the partition and install some software before putting it back into the JrIDE. It might be complicated, but if it works, it will be worth the effort. If it doesn't, I I'll just have to try it differently until something works, I guess...


I'll have to wait until I'm able to do this, though. The flash on my JrIDE is screwed up at the moment and can't really do much until it's replaced.

[jmetal88]

The disk images I posted there are 720k, by the way. I was thinking about making a 360k disk image just for PCjr folks, but I couldn't decide which files to include and which to leave out. What I had to do for my own PCjr was to boot up the 720k disks in an emulator (I think it was Bochs), and format a virtual 360k disk so I could boot the PCjr with it, then I was able to copy files from the 720k disks after that was set up.