🚀 go-pugleaf

>My girlfriend owns a dinsosaur of an IBM compatible.  She purchased it
>in 1987 and has lost the manual for it.  I opened it up to install a
>modem and it does have an Intel 8088 chip.  So we are definatley
>talking XT compat.

Not neccecarily; you just *might* have a real indestructible IMB-PC.

>I wanted to uprgrade the DOS she's running to 4.01 from 3.09 but
[...]
Why not try dos3.3x instead?

Leo


Leo Mekenkamp
Leiden University, The Netherlands
Mekenkamp@RulWinWST.Leidenuniv.NL
	     ^^^
Not connected to MS, believe me.

leo@rulhp2.leidenuniv.nl (L. Mekenkamp) writes:


>>My girlfriend owns a dinsosaur of an IBM compatible.  She purchased it
>>in 1987 and has lost the manual for it.  I opened it up to install a
>>modem and it does have an Intel 8088 chip.  So we are definatley
>>talking XT compat.

>Not neccecarily; you just *might* have a real indestructible IMB-PC.

>>I wanted to uprgrade the DOS she's running to 4.01 from 3.09 but
>[...]
>Why not try dos3.3x instead?

I've upgraded a couple of work XTs from 2.1 or 3.3 to DOS 5.0.

It is worth it just for the new DOS 5.0 editor and DOS 5.0
dosshell.  DOS 4 is a dog of a DOS, nasty dosshell and
leaves less application memory than DOS 3.3 or 5.0.

Lachlan 

-- 
  Lachlan Cranswick  -  CSIRO             _--_|\  lachlan@dmp.CSIRO.AU
  Division of Mineral Products           /      \ tel +61 3 647 0367
  PO Box 124, Port Melbourne 3207        \_.--._/ fax +61 3 646 3223
  AUSTRALIA                                    v 

	I really can't think of any reason to use a DOS higher than v3.3 on
an XT clone.  I'm assuming you don't have any high memory, so the new memory
management features won't be much good to you.  DOSSHELL is probably
unbearably slow, and I think EDIT *will* run under DOS 3.3 assuming EDIT.COM
and QBASIC.EXE are installed.) DOS 3.3 supports HD floppies and there is
software available which allows you to use large hard drives without
dividing them into bite-sized pieces.  If you don't *need* 4.01 or 5.0 to
run specific applications I'd suggest that you just upgrade to 3.3 and save
memory and space.  (Without high memory, DOS 5.0 uses a good deal of
conventional RAM.) Can anyone think of any other reasons to upgrade on a
machine this old?


-- 
| Tom Guptill           | tgpt_ltd@cc.rochester.edu (internet) |
| CPU Box 277445 U of R | tgpt_ltd@uordbv (bitnet)             |
| Rochester NY 14627    |                                      |
| (716) 274-0156        |                                      |

In article <1993Jan5.000106.17939@dmp.csiro.au> lachlan@dmp.csiro.au
(Lachlan Cranswick) writes:

>leo@rulhp2.leidenuniv.nl (L. Mekenkamp) writes:

>>>My girlfriend owns a dinsosaur of an IBM compatible...

[SNIP, SNIP]

>>Not neccecarily; you just *might* have a real indestructible IMB-PC.

Yeah!, that's right. My PC's are my 1982 IBM PC, a 1985 UNIX PC, and a
Toshiba 1000 laptop.  By "dinosaur", you were no doubt refering to the
indestructible nature of the IBM.

My IBM PC has been flipped on and off daily for 11 years without one
problem.  It runs the MKS toolkit over DOS 3.3, and does just fine at
matrix calculations in APL (with Fortran calls).  It runs its applications
(including TeX and XyWrite) and a graphics tablet without a problem.

[Last night I fixed a friend's new state-of-the-art clone.  Pins and
gravity slots hold the backplane in place, so if the case were turned
it would fall out.  No problem, for the system had been mounted
upside-down in the case in order to put the fan at the top, where it
should be.  All that holds the backplane (with its 80486dx) in place
are the accessory boards.]

For someone who uses COMMAND.COM and DOS's accessory commands, the
only upgrade that would make sense would be to 4DOS.  But if the PC is
short on necessary tuning tools, such as a disk cache and
defragmenter, DR-DOS 6.0 might a bargain.  Otherwise, why change a
tool if it works?

Bruce Bathurst (Gypsy Scholar)
-- 
Department of Geological and Geophysical Sciences
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544
bathurst@phoenix.princeton.edu bathurst@pucc.bitnet !princeton!phoenix!bathurst

In article <1993Jan5.013050.26324@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>, tgpt_ltd@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Tom Guptill) writes:
|> 
|> 
|> 	I really can't think of any reason to use a DOS higher than v3.3 on
|> an XT clone.  I'm assuming you don't have any high memory, so the new memory
|> management features won't be much good to you.  DOSSHELL is probably
|> unbearably slow, and I think EDIT *will* run under DOS 3.3 assuming EDIT.COM
|> and QBASIC.EXE are installed.) DOS 3.3 supports HD floppies and there is
|> software available which allows you to use large hard drives without
|> dividing them into bite-sized pieces.  If you don't *need* 4.01 or 5.0 to
|> run specific applications I'd suggest that you just upgrade to 3.3 and save
|> memory and space.  (Without high memory, DOS 5.0 uses a good deal of
|> conventional RAM.) Can anyone think of any other reasons to upgrade on a
|> machine this old?

If the machine has a HD > 32 megs, then 4.01 is a nice thing to have for its
support for large partitions.  Also, it may be difficult to impossible to get a
legal copy of any DOS version < 5.0 these days.

-- 



I think
I think I am
Therefore I am!
I think...



                            Steve Gabrilowitz
                            Martin Marietta, Orlando Fl.
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