Topic: Anyone got a copy of MS-DOS 5.0 they'd be willing to part with?

[Sethan]

Anyone got a copy of MS-DOS 5.0 they'd be willing to part with?

One of my clients has an ancient 286 that runs a calligraphy plotter.

They're booting it off a 5-1/4 floppy, and storing data on the 21MB MFM HD - which is now going bad.

I'm going to try moving this beast to newer hardware, but I want to maintain the same OS - and I'd like to reload it as I am not certain of the integrity of the existing files.

[toasty0]

Anyone got a copy of MS-DOS 5.0 they'd be willing to part with?

One of my clients has an ancient 286 that runs a calligraphy plotter.

They're booting it off a 5-1/4 floppy, and storing data on the 21MB MFM HD - which is now going bad.

I'm going to try moving this beast to newer hardware, but I want to maintain the same OS - and I'd like to reload it as I am not certain of the integrity of the existing files.

Sethan,

Try http://www.codeproject.com/lounge.asp . You might getting lucky here as some these guys are long time developers and pack rats.

Jerry

[Sethan]

Thanks, I'll check there.  What kills me, is I had a copy (along with everything else back to DOS 3.3) up until last year - and the wife was giving me so much flak about having old computers around the house, that I got rid of most of my older equipment and software.

...stuff I've only needed a dozen or so times since then. 

[Bonk]

I can probably lay my hands on a spare copy. (DOS 5 was a sweet OS... MS's best?) (I have to revive an old infra-red spectrometer with a very similar datasytem shortly... complete with plotter... those are fun!  ) I'll let ya know if I have an extra copy.

Dollars to donuts the 16 bit app will run fine on a WinXP box with some tweaking... if not, then WIn95b...?

[Sethan]

Thanks, Bonk.

I am moving data off that machine as we speak.

I no longer have anything old enough to run the MFM controller that is in it, so I am doing it by floppy.  Ugh.

At least I was able to get the thing to take a 3.5, so I don't have to do it by 5.25.

[toasty0]

Thanks, Bonk.

I am moving data off that machine as we speak.

I no longer have anything old enough to run the MFM controller that is in it, so I am doing it by floppy.  Ugh.

At least I was able to get the thing to take a 3.5, so I don't have to do it by 5.25.

5.25?  Ouch? Can you even find those anymore?

[Nemesis]

If you are unable to find DOS 5 you might consider Freedos as a substitute.

[E_Look]

Thanks, Bonk.

I am moving data off that machine as we speak.

I no longer have anything old enough to run the MFM controller that is in it, so I am doing it by floppy.  Ugh.

At least I was able to get the thing to take a 3.5, so I don't have to do it by 5.25.

Sethan, if you still need, I'll rummage around the basement.  If not, I'll just continue to keep my feet on my desk and rummage around Hot & Spicy or Models or logout and play SFC1.

Anyhow, this is a good reason for me to keep my old 286 around; besides, I threw mucho cash into it- a (then expensive) Toshiba P321 dot matrix, a 80287 math coprocessor (yeah, they didn't build 'em in in those days), a mouse (!!), I even added a 3.5" floppy drive!  It runs a MFM HD... what a whopping 30 Mb??

[Sethan]

I was able to lay my hands on a copy of DOS5. My thanks to all who took the trouble to look.