need help choosing an OS for my dos PC/LAPTOP

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kaitlin4599
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need help choosing an OS for my dos PC/LAPTOP

Post by kaitlin4599 »

ok so last weekend while at a local thrift store i managed to score a used but working i tested it before i bought it Compaq Armada SB 5200 Laptop. it came with the max 96 MB ram, with a fixed amount of 32 MB (non-removable) installed as well as a 64meg chip installed in the lone ram slot. it also came with a 4gig ide hard drive as well as a 200MHz Intel Pentium w/MMX CPU.

now from what i can tell by doing google research as well as browsing the hp website it looks like i can put DOS,WINDOWS 3.1,WINDOWS 95, or WINDOWS 98/98SE. my question is which os should i install on this old laptop and why? heres some more info to clarify a few things

I know that windows 98se has a full ms dos boot mode accessible via the shutdown menu

the few games i play are this

catacombs 3D commander keen duke nukem side scroller mechwarrior 2 jill of the jungle and a few other games

so which os should i install and why

edit i forgot to mention i do plan to upgrade the hard drive as 4gigs is not enough for me
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486 player
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Post by 486 player »

MS-DOS (& Win 3.1x) doesn't work in bigger partition than 2 GB or 64 MB RAM.
SE sucks least o' the rest.
NO Windows, NO DOSBox, DOS!
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Quadko
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Post by Quadko »

Cool find!

If you're interested, and since you're probably reformatting the hard drive anyway, you might be able to figure out dual-booting with a small dos/win3.x partition and a win98 se partition. You'll need a boot loader, that's where the complexity will come in. Alternately, if it has a floppy drive, you could boot the Dos/Win3x with a dos boot floppy, and just have win98 se on the main partition/hard drive boot. You'll just need a smaller (less than 2 gb) partition to hold the dos/win3x data so they can see it.

But if you don't want to fool around with dual booting, add my vote to 486 players and do 98 SE. No reason to do Win95 I can think of.
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