best DOS machine

Well, I can tell you my usual MS-DOS setup--and this is replicated many times in the hardware that I have. I first install Win98SE or ME (with command-line shutdown patch). This gives me an MS-DOS 7.1 base and FAT32 support. I modify the MSDOS.SYS file to boot into "plain DOS" mode, rather than GUI mode--I can get to the Windows GUI with the "WIN" command. I also install DOSLFN to give me long-filename support in non-GUI mode. Next, I install Japheth's HXDOS DPMI server with Win32 support. This allows me to run later compilers and assemblers that require a WIN32 API. It also lets me compile and run console WIN32 programs. If it's a later system with more than a GB of memory, I'll install the Win98 "unofficial service Pack 2" and dedicate a large part of the extra memory to a RAMDisk and assign it as the temporary drive for Windows. That gives me a system that runs MS-DOS programs, allows for unobstructed access to low-level system facilities (e.g. I/O ports) and gives me the option of running Windows if I need to. If the machine can run them, I'll also install Windows XP and Linux or BSD in multiboot mode. On larger, later systems, where I don't need direct hardware access, I'll run both VirtualBox and DOSEMU and WINE under Linux, which allows me to run pretty much whatever I want. That's a setup that I use nearly every day--and have been for years to do real, productive work. I am not interested in running vintage games. --Chuck