3 ms·
FreeDOS tends to be surprisingly heavy compared to "era-appropriate" DOS revisions. I have an 8MHz 186-class hobby machine, and PC DOS 2000 is lighter and some
by hakfoo 3y ago
FreeDOS tends to be surprisingly heavy compared to "era-appropriate" DOS revisions. I have an 8MHz 186-class hobby machine, and PC DOS 2000 is lighter and some of its utilities are snappier than FreeDOS's.
I suspect on a 386+ it does better, as you're less constrained by conventional memory, and you've got the cycles to spare for richer utilities.
- lproven 3y agoI agree. I haven't done a lot of digging on pre-386 kit this century, but it bears pointing out that even MS-DOS itself post v5 is significantly bigger and heavier on machines without XMS and UMBs. PC/MS DOS 3.3 gives the most RAM if you can't have an HMA (the 64kB above 1MB, only available on 286 or higher.) But DOS 3.3 is limited to 32MB partitions. The most featureful DOS for XT-class kit is DR-DOS 3.41, which is obscure and little-known. It gives you standards-compliant large-partition support (like Compaq DOS 3.31 and pretty much no other version, but without anything Compaq-specific. https://winworldpc.com/product/dr-dos/3x https://winworldpc.com/product/dr-dos/3x
- hakfoo 3y agoYou can actually load MS-DOS and PC-DOS high on an XT, if you have a memory card that populates UMBs, but you need DOSMAX and a utility like USE!UMBS. It doesn't seem to work with FreeDOS though. I've been able to get like 605k conventional RAM with PC-DOS 2000 and still have big partitions. Practically speaking, even a 60Mb partition is slow to rattle though.