China DOS Union

**Purpose**: Run CCED, WPS, UCDOS, Turbo C,......, Battleaxe, Prince of Persia, Western封神榜,......
　　　Real environment (DOSBOX is not allowed).

**Configuration**: Celeron D / 845GV / 247 M DDR memory / 160 G parallel port hard disk

**Questions**: 1. For the best compatibility (all DOS software and games can run). Should the boot hard disk have only DOS installed or Windows (ME) + DOS installed?
　　　　 There are many DOS versions such as DOS 3.3 / 5.0 / 6.22 / 7.10. To make all DOS software run, which one is better?

　　　2. For a 160G hard disk, should it be formatted as FAT32 or FAT16? If it is made into FAT32, does DOS 6.22 / 5.0 not support it?

　　　3. Can the hard disk be made into a multi - system boot? For example, choose "DOS3.3 / DOS5.0 / DOS7.10" when booting.
　　　　 Is there a need to do this?
　　　　 If it can be realized, how are the Config.sys and Autoexec.bat of each set of systems distinguished? The Command.com file should also be different. How to avoid confusion?

If your purpose is just to play DOS games, then installing only one DOS system is enough. Then which version of DOS should you install? At least I haven't heard of any ancient DOS games that can only run under low-version DOS but not under high-version DOS. So I think installing 7.10 is fine, and you can use up to a 160G hard drive capacity; if you install version 6.22, you can only use up to 8G capacity.

DOS 6.22 and earlier versions only support FAT16, not FAT32. The maximum capacity of a single partition is 2G, and the maximum recognized hard drive capacity is 8G (strictly speaking, it's 1024 cylinders). So if you install 6.22 on your 160G hard drive, you can only use 8G.

If you think you don't need 160G for DOS games, you can install a Windows system to facilitate file transfer and management. For example, some DOS software collected online is packaged with Windows compression software and uses long filenames, so it's more convenient to decompress under Windows. Although there are now long filename drivers for DOS, I can't be entirely sure whether DOS compression software can handle files packaged by Windows version compression software. So it's more convenient to install a DOS/Windows dual system.

Then which version of Windows should you install? Considering your 256M memory, it's better to install Windows 98 SE, and then you don't need to install a dual system. You can directly use MS-DOS 7.10 included in Win98.

I have a machine with the same 845 motherboard as yours, but my memory is relatively "large" (compared to that time) - 2G, so I installed the Windows XP system, and of course, I also installed DOS and some other systems.