Re: [GTALUG] sigh, hardware resources?

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

| From: Karen Lewellen via talk 

| In fact, the P3 or greater aspect is far more important than the ISO slot, if
| that makes sense.

Why do you need the power of a P III?  Generally speaking, DOS software 
was built for much weaker processors (eg. 486 or older).

| Although not installing freedos, it can manage more current hardware, so can
| the DOS I run to some extent.
| www.freedos.org

FreeDOS looks like a good choice: it is still maintained.
What DOS do you use?

Here are some technical requirements that may make a recent machine 
unsuitable:

DOS requires a BIOS as opposed to UEFI firmware.
For about a decade, all machines came with UEFI firmware.
But some UEFI firmware can emulate BIOS.

FreeDOS requires that the disk be formated using MBR, not GPT.


DOS requires disks to have 512-byte sector.  That's less common these days 
-- most current drives 4096-byte sectors.  Sometimes they can emulate 
512-byte sectors.

MBR disks are limited to 2TB or less:


FAT32 partitions are limited to 2TB as well:

FreeDOS has supported FAT32 since 2002 (recent, in DOS terms).
Does your DOS support FAT32?
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Re: [GTALUG] sigh, hardware resources?

[Karen Lewellen via talk]

I need one that can burn as well as read.
Indeed about the dvdr able to manage cds, play them as well as manage the 
software.

i have an entire case of writable medium for work.



On Sat, 14 Oct 2023, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:


| From: Karen Lewellen via talk 

| A dvdr or combination cd and dvdr would be appreciated, or at least room for
| both.

Do you need a drive with the ability to "burn" or is reading enough?

As far as I know, all drives that can handle DVDs also handle CDs.

There are a whole lot of different kinds of drives:

- CD, read-only
- CD, read / write
- CD & DVD, read-only
- CD read / write, DVD read-only
- CD read / write, DVD read-write

There was a war about the way writeable DVDs should work.  The two
standards were DVD-R and DVD+R.

I think DVD+R won.  Usually you don't have to worry about this.

Then there are some drives that can handle BluRay discs.
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Re: [GTALUG] sigh, hardware resources?

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

| From: Karen Lewellen via talk 

| A dvdr or combination cd and dvdr would be appreciated, or at least room for
| both.

Do you need a drive with the ability to "burn" or is reading enough?

As far as I know, all drives that can handle DVDs also handle CDs.

There are a whole lot of different kinds of drives:

- CD, read-only
- CD, read / write
- CD & DVD, read-only
- CD read / write, DVD read-only
- CD read / write, DVD read-write

There was a war about the way writeable DVDs should work.  The two
standards were DVD-R and DVD+R.

I think DVD+R won.  Usually you don't have to worry about this.

Then there are some drives that can handle BluRay discs.
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