DOS is still possible

Bootstrapping DOS inside VirtualBox The biggest challenge with classic OSs like MS-DOS, DR-DOS and so on is the fact that there is no readily available downloadable ISO-image that you could just virtually insert into the virtual CD-tray of VirtualBox . For anything that is just a little bit younger than DOS, you can probably find the CD image file. Even Windows 95 (while still being available on floppy disk) was already distributed on a CD. The second 10 minutes exercise Floppy images - the solution Fortunately there is the concept of floppy disk images as well. These floppy image files can be inserted into the virtual disk drive of VirtualBox in the same way as CD images. The nice thing about that: it gives you the very original visual impression what it looked like, installing DOS on a brand new computer. What is missing though is the typical sound of these classic disk drives. So let's try DOS 5. You need 2 floppy images. Right click these links and choose "Sav...

Why DOS? Obviously this is a very valid question and it has been asked many many times. My personal answer: "because we can". Actually there is nothing wrong with using DOS in any of it's flavors. Today I would say it mainly serves educational purposes. You can learn about virtualization and how to run multiple OSs on a single machine . In addition it will teach you how to work your way through a command line and text based configuration files. With modern computers offering all kinds of virtualization techniques it's quite easy to get a perfect DOS or for that matter Windows 1.x, 2.x, 3.0, 3.1, Windows for Workgroups machine going. How to start? Get a virtualization software. The easiest to start with on a standard Windows machine (provided it has a little bit of horse power) is probably VirtualBox ( https://www.virtualbox.org/ ). Download, install, you are good to go. On Linux or MacOS you could use VirtualBox as well. Linux also offers  KVM ( https://wiki.c...