Over the years I've occasionally felt like there must actually be two versions of Windows in the world: One that runs pretty well, most of the time, and is fast enough to get things done, and another that got installed on most of the Windows systems I've had to deal with. This thread is another example of that phenomenon. I have two other theories to explain this:
(1) Windows has some kind of latent awareness, and has never liked me, even before I became a Linux user;
(2) "PC" hardware is extremely fragmented and buggy, so that a reliable signal on one box will sometimes get lost on a secend, almost identical box. If your setup happens (by random chance, possibly in your choice of manufacturer) to mostly match the systems used by Microsoft, then Windows will run fine; otherwise, you might as well give up now. Linux has more effective field testing, plus a lot of the drivers were reverse-engineered and hence tuned to the way hardware actually works, as opposed to the way it was intended to work - so those of us with Windowsphobic hardware still often get good results from Linux.

Back on topic, smeezekitty, have you tried Arachne for DOS on your 486? It was my favourite browser back in my 2/3/486 days. I still think it has the best browser UI I've ever used.

"Ol' Dobbin" is finally starting to break down for me, but this little laptop which was bought to run Windows 95 is still a surprisingly fast machine when running Gentoo.

The thing that I miss about the older equipment was that it was both smaller and simpler ... and, in my experience, often better-made. Microsoft, as Steve Jobs once put it, was "promiscuous" in its licensing of Windows, and there's just a lot of crap hardware out there running it.

Not the OP but as recently as a couple of years ago I used Arachne for DOS quite a bit on my Panasonic CF-01 (Am5x86 running at 133Mhz, 1.6 GB hard disk, 24 MB of RAM) and Opera 9.5* on Windows 95. Arachne was/is an impressive piece of work, at least to non-programmer like me.

I found it kind of slow (it was heavy on the disk access) and the lack of CSS support was a major downfall in rendering

Cigarette in one hand, mouse in the other - that's multitasking isn't it?
WRONG THREAD, BRIAN!!! Do one thing at once! Dozy old f...f...fellow!

I did wonder how well Arachne had aged, until recently I hand't even noticed it had been updated. Shame about the CSS, still I'm glad at least one person still likes it.

Now I come to think of it, last time I used it it was as a 10-second-boot-to-internet solution on a Pentium, where it had a huge RAM disc so it could thrash to its heart's content.

Back in the day I was mostly excited about having a (then) up-to-date browser that didn't require Windows, though I liked the look & feel and the developer's attitude too.

@Pastychomper Someone ported Arachne to linux a few years ago. Somewhere in my pile of junk I've got an old laptop with a 3.7 Knoppix on it and Arachne. I don't remember using it much, I think a new "shiny bauble" came along and I lost interest. ;-)

As much fun as the '486 was, I still like the 6502 and the 8008. (Yeah, pack-rat that I am, I have one-or-more of each.)

It's great to see the interest in old technology and it is interesting that some older technologies have either never been improved upon, or even dropped with nothing better to replace them. We can actually see some of these on YouTube which hosts many videos of REALLY ancient stuff including, working demonstrations of Xerox Star, Vic 20, Apple 1, Lisa, Altair, and of course C64 and Amiga amongst many more. The Xerox Star is particularly interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn4vC80Pv6Q

I am starting a build on a PCI 486 now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaRMzlIpzvI

I have an old 486 computer. It was my uncle's when he was in high school. My grandfather had it in his office, I asked about it, and he let me have it.

No USB ports, not even a PS/2 port. A bit of Googling informed me that PS/2 keyboards are really AT keyboards with a different shape plug. I brought out the wire cutters, alligator clips, and Invisible Fence wire (It's the perfect size for the AT ports), and soon I was playing around in DOS.

I'm tempted to try to install Linux on it since right now it's collecting dust...

As for DOS in a 64-bit CPU, my laptop with an i3 boots DOS 5.0 just fine. Doesn't recognize the C: drive, though...

Ok, I'll bite... How can a system requiring C: (and that, as the first, and active partition, on the first drive) not recognize C: and still boot?

Hi there,

that's about what I'd expect - though I'd wish you were more precise: Is it actually the HDD itself that DOS doesn't recognize, or just the partition (the file system)? Fact is that DOS 5 won't recognize any file system other than FAT12 or FAT16, which you're not likely to have on your today's laptop. It should, however, be able to detect the drive as such, even though there's an issue with drives larger than 128GB - DOS will only "see" the actual size modulo 128GB - check that with fdisk if you like.
The drive being a SATA one rather than IDE shouldn't matter, as DOS uses BIOS calls to access the drives.

Why do you think DOS 5 would require the C: drive to work? It could also boot from a floppy disk or from a USB drive in legacy mode, emulating an FDD or HDD.

[X] Doc CPU

Floppy disk I imagine

You're probably correct that it just fails to recognize the partition...

As for booting without a C: drive, AFAIK DOS floppies only use the A: drive. Probably why when it booted I was greeted with "A:>"