> > ...the board format does not matter much. > > It's the CPU model/generation that matters. > > NOT. AT. ALL. > > each Intel/AMD CPU produced the last 20 years is able > to execute the same way that the previous versions did.
If it doesn't matter "at all" then where can I get a modern CPU with working support for ISA DMA? It was removed back in one of the Pentium 4 chipsets so the CPU model/generation is definitely important. > to summarize: unless you have special needs, just every mainboard > produced the last 40 years should work with ANYDOS. Don't ask for > sound... That's no guarantee though. Some modern machines only provide partial BIOS services - only enough to get common operating system installers to run and no more. I have had machines that booted to DOS and I could install an operating system on and it ran fine, but they would lock up when I tried to run most DOS programs because they were missing a bunch of ROM BIOS services. It looks like they don't always bother implementing the full feature set when for 99.999% of their customers it will never get used. It seems UEFI machines are the worst offenders for this, as they ship with a BIOS compatibility layer that has been written from scratch, as opposed to older machines that run the same BIOS code that's been in use for decades. They apparently left all the old BIOS code hanging around unchanged for years in those implementations, but when they had to write a BIOS-compatible layer for UEFI from scratch, it seems some vendors just did the bear essentials only. One of these was a small form factor Intel NUC I bought a few years ago with the intention of installing Windows 98 on it to use for playing old Windows 3D games, but alas I couldn't even run the Windows installer either. Many programs just made it freeze. The device very specifically states that it only supports running a limited number of operating systems and they really mean it. Cheers, Adam. _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
