Dual boot DOS 6.22 and linux. Starting with a clean HD. If dependent on linux distro, I'm flexible have used several in the past decade.

Installation order?

Any particular linux distro easier?

I've searched quite a bit and come up with nothing.

Anyone actually done this?

NOT interested in WINE, emulators etc.

Thanks for any info.

I have multiple multiboot PCs that include PC DOS 2000 (PC DOS 7 with Y2K update), which has the same ancient limitations as 6.22. They were all created well over a decade ago. Those on newer PCs/disks are clones from older.

Distro and installation order do not matter as long as you understand boot flags in partition tables and how to manage them for legacy operating systems. The following (IIRC) do matter:

• Partitioning must be MBR/legacy style
• Installation target must be a primary partition on a 512 byte per (logical or physical) sector HD
• Partition must be within the first ~8GB of the disk if logical 255 head 63 sector partitioning is used. Constraint is reduced for smaller logical CHS values, such as current norm of 64 head 32 sector limiting it to within first 1GB.
• Target partition only must have the boot flag set

Once the installation is complete and tested, the boot flag is no longer required for a Gnu or other generic bootloader to be used to boot it, but there cannot be more than one primary partition's boot flag set per disk.

Easiest method is to partition first using any partitioning tool capable of incorporating the above listed conditions, then boot DOS floppy to runthen xcopy or extract the files from source media to C:\ or C:\DOS. It's been more than 25 years since I tried installing DOS by any other method.

Why do you want to use 6.22 instead of FreeDOS?

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Isn't this a classic case for a vm guest ?. Might save a lot of needless grief - you could give it "hardware" it knows about.

Some DOS software lacks functionality in a VM. None of the Gnu DOS emulators I tried support the proprietary SVGA text modes required for optimal operation of the ancient Borland apps I still use. One "emulator" works better that DOS - OS/2 - which runs an IBM DOS session on top of a competent I/O subsystem. Pure DOS is a slug with "big" files and its BIOS disk access. In OS/2, big files load and save quickly just like in Linux. FreeDOS probably can do as well, but I haven't had motivation to do that testing.

I'm extremely curious as to why you want to do this.

And my recommendation is to just make a FreeDOS boot USB or CD.

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I've used DOS with zipslack many years ago. Think you can still find it. As I recall one could boot to DOS then use loadlin maybe to switch to linux on some old kernels.

Just really not enough info for us to guess. I think you'd have to have an older machine to boot DOS. As above that gets much easier to do on modern hardware with a VM or other means.

Can consider dosbox.

The main reason is that I am recovering files from old QIC80 tapes that were originally made from a FAT16 formatted disk and can only be recovered to a FAT16 formatted disk. I know very little about FreeDOS but I believe that it needs a FAT32 formatted disk. There may be other subtle differences in DOS and FreeDOS and I have no idea if my tape backup software uses any of them.

mkfs.fat (on linux) will build fat16 if so directed. If you insist on real dual-boot see mrmazda notes above - the rest of up probably haven't attempted anything like that this century.

How does this tape connect?

To expand a bit on syg00's suggestion, you have ways to container that filesystem too. From virtual filesystem within some method like squashfs or aufs or maybe a file/iso.

Shouldn't tar take file by file from tape. I guess you are saying that you some binary data on tapes.

DOS must be installed first, I remember that from the early days. And it must be on the first partition of drive 1.

Loaded question, but Slackware still defaults to LILO, and LILO should still work with DOS. But you should set your BIOS to legacy boot.

John

I've been multibooting over 25 years. While DOS must think it is on drive 1, the rest is myth carried forward into Windows 3.x, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, etc.