Is MS-DOS, PC DOS and DR-DOS vintage enough to count?

[Liam Proven]

I'm experimenting with some old DOS versions, notably PC DOS, in VirtualBox.

I have a PC-DOS 2000 system with DesqView and DesqView/X working
fairly well -- no networking yet but I'm working on it.

I am also trying to get a DR-DOS 8 VM up and running. DR-DOS 7.03 is
no problem, but I've had no joy getting DR-DOS 8.1 to install to hard
disk. It's reluctant to SYS a hard disk, and when it did, it
mis-diagnosed it as FAT-12 and wouldn't boot. Using Norton DiskTools,
I've managed to transfer the system files, but they display the
message

DR-DOS 8.1

... and then it freezes.

Can this late version, mainly used for utility floppies, actually boot
from HD & be used like a normal DOS?

And although I've not tried it yet, the same question applies to PC
DOS 7.1, the early-noughties version that can understand FAT32 and
long filenames.

-- 
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