best dos machine

I'd be inclined to look for a 16MHz 80386 machine from the '92-'94 era, preferably with IDE and 8MB of RAM (or more). With IDE, you can get an IDE to CompactFlash adapter, which will be more reliable than any mechanical drive that will work with a machine from that era, and CF media is fairly cheap. Single-ended SCSI stuff is getting long in the tooth and hard to find these days, and ST-506 and ESDI stuff is rarer than hen's teeth, and pricey in working condition. ISA bus is desirable. Look for an early (non-plug-and-play) Sound Blaster 16 card, and for ease of data transfer, I'd recommend picking up a NIC too--I like the Intel EtherExpress 16TP or (if you don't mind using an AUI transceiver) 3Com 3C509. Version of DOS: 5.0 is the earliest I'd go with, for several reasons. I'd recommend 6.22 for maximum flexibility though, or IBM PC-DOS 2000, if you can find it. Get yourself a version of Windows for Workgroups 3.11, as it's easy to get Microsoft's 32-bit TCP/IP stack running on it, as well as Win32s for certain apps. If you do get a 386, I'd make sure it's a DX and not an SX, as well as not being one labeled "FOR 16-BIT S/W ONLY". I say 386 because it should still be slow enough to run a lot of timing-sensitive games and such. However, if you're like me, and you're more interested in running serious software (development tools, etc.), I'd look for a 90MHz Pentium or higher, with 16 or 32MB of RAM, a few PCI slots, and something like a Diamond Stealth 64 video card. Stick to the SB16 for sound though, or you'll run into lots of compatibility problems--Creative Labs was king in that era. On the topic, if your'e doing the DOS thing, why not build up a dual-boot system that also runs OS/2 Warp Connect? If you do your disk layout right, you get a huge amount of flexibility from this--and OS/2 runs each Win16 app in its own private memory space, which is great for stability, as well as being able to dish out more conventional memory to picky DOS games. I have a machine running OS/2 Warp Connect, DOS 6.22, and Windows 3.11 on a 233MHz Pentium with 32MB of RAM, a Sound Blaster 16, and an IDE-to-CF adapter with 2GB CF media. I even use it for MIDI sequencing occasionally, with good old Cakewalk 3. Has 5.25" and 3.5" floppy drives, as well as a 52X CD burner. An absolute pleasure to use, as Win3.11 pops up in about 3 seconds, and OS/2 Warp is rock solid. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about writing good CONFIG.SYS files: at any given time, mine allows me to pick one of several configurations for different uses. jpw P.S., and not for the OP: Flames about top-posting will be redirected to /dev/null. Take your flames to Google for making it the Gmail default and making cut-and-paste so unusable on Android. On Tue, Jul 8, 2014 at 4:02 AM, Derrick Meury <rmx44 at aim.com> wrote: