There are five DOS's that I've used and know to work. Each with their good and bad points.
Four are commerical OS's the other free. The first MS-DOS, © which anyone who used Win3x or Win9x has used it.
If, not for anything else, but to load Windows ©.
Not very well supported, (not really suppport at all by MicroSoft ©) but there are plenty of information
and utilities sites that support MS-DOS ©. Look at the link page for a list of these sites.
IBM's ©
PC DOS 2000, compatible to MS-DOS 6.22, but has bells and
whistles that MS-DOS © 6.22 does not have. The difference is approved commands, Y2K compliant, device drivers that
can be loaded on the fly, Rexx © a Object Orientated
script language, that can be used like a shell script, with a multiple possibilities, task management,
advanced power mangement and timed events. Generally more stable than MS-DOS ©:,
generally the one I use most.
Seems IBM does not support PC-DOS any more. There are no links on any of there sites
and I've emailed them on several occasions with no reply.
DR-DOS, ©
compatiable with MS-DOS 6.22, with Personal NetWare © (IPX protocol)
an installable option. For connections to Netware Servers or can be used as a file and/or print server, and/or a client on a
small local network.
DR-DOS has task management, multitasking, nice interface and easily configurable config.sys and
autoexec.bat files. My second choice. Free for private use.
DevicLogic's DrDOS 8
DeviceLogic, the new owner of Dr DOS, release DRDOS80, with TCP/IP, HTMLViewer, Fat32, etc...
PTS-DOS ©
a commerial, russian version of MS-DOS with a small memory
foot print, used in the Russian space program. Has LAN, and Internet programs, very stable, can deal with
32 bit applications and long file names. Needs lots of outside utilities.
PTSDOS2000PRO ©
Paragon's version of PTS DOS, built-in memory managers, cd-rom support, data compresion etc. with source.
TSX-32 Muti-user,
multitasking OS that runs on/over DOS. Check it out!
And FreeDOS ©
a compatible 3.3 DOS, with a lot of development and support. nice for
a low end machines. Full version has interface (GUI), compilers (assembly,C)and utilities. Though, it won't
be long before it runs the others off.
FreeDOS moves towards version 1.0 MSDOS 5 compatiable.
FreeDOS Version 1.0 Out Now: 3/9/06
Be sure you check out DOS Solutions links page under DOS OS for additional or alternative
DOS's.
If you would like a comperhensive list of DOS's and links to them visit Run DOS Run. There are DOS's there that I didn't even know were in existance.
