One problem in these days is drivers. There was a glorious period of the DOS days, when: * all sound cards had a mode compatible with SoundBlaster or at least

One problem in these days is drivers. There was a glorious period of the DOS days, when: * all sound cards had a mode compatible with SoundBlaster or at least AdLib cards; * all Ethernet cards had a mode compatible with NE2000 cards; * all video cards had EGA/VGA/VESA compatibles modes. So that defined an informal standard for PC/DOS. Your programs just needed to support these and you could get a working system (even if you didn't have specific driver to use the full power of the specific card). Nowadays, if you try installing DOS on a current machine, you won't be able to get your games to play sound, nor to connect to your LAN. Video cards still seem to honour VESA standards (however only old ones, with old resolution, there was no VESA update to support modern resolutions), but for how long? I hit that reality when I tried to install DOS on two machines a few months ago. Then you fetch old Ethernet or sound cards from dusty boxes in the attic and... there is no ISA (or even PCI) slot on your motherboard, damned! And modern chips have ditched the compatibility layer with older chips :-( And of course, it has been a while since manufacturer stopped providing DOS drivers for their specific chips.