FreeDOS

I keep wanting to get a "modern" MS-DOS system.  I've gone to Monotech and was desiring their NuXT. But the price was restrictive.  $320 for just the motherboard.  I'd still need to get a case and power supply - which, while less than $320, was still a good amount of money.

I noticed that I had a spare HP EliteDesk G1 SFF that I had purchased as a "burner" PC for the Man Cave and decided to give FreeDOS a try on it.

FreeDOS is basically MS-DOS made for more modern PCs.  So it's actually DOS, but you can run it on more modern PCs and it will work nicely.

Problem 1:  Getting software on it.  The EliteDesk had no floppy drives and FreeDOS doesn't support USB sticks (sort of).

Solution: FreeDOS does support USB drives only if it's set as the boot drive.  So, you have to plug it in, set the BIOS to boot from it - but here's the workaround - you have to tell the BIOS that, for this boot, you need to boot from the hard drive.  Weird, but it works.

So software loaded.  Yay.

But I still want that "real" MS-DOS experience.  I need to have a floppy drive in it.

So I went into the display case and pulled out the last floppy drive that I had installed in a PC.  1.44MB 3.5".  Good.  But how to hook it up?

The EliteDesk has no floppy controller (no surprise).  So I found this on eBay.  I simply ran the USB cable out the back of the case and into one of the USB ports.  And it works.

Some software isn't compatible, though.

The CPU is a quad core 4.2Ghz, so software that relies on clock cycles for timing just run wayyyyy too fast.

The system is naturally a VGA system, but it's not old VGA, so some video stuff just crashes.

But, overall, most stuff works and works nice.  I had fun playing Duke Nukem 1 and other games.

I have the Wifi modem hooked to the serial port, so I can BBS.

But I don't have a mouse (and don't really want one), so some software fails there.

I'm still working on getting the CD-ROM working in FreeDOS.