Following last week’sopen sourcingof MS-DOS 4 andcritique, Twitter userVirtuallyFunshared their cutting-edge 16 MHz Intel i386 MS-DOS 4 install on the 1987IBMPersonal System/2, which mainly lives on today in its legacy PS/2 peripheral connectors. In its time, the IBM PS/2 could also have been paired with IBM’s PC DOS orMicrosoft-collabOperating System/2.
This MS-DOS 4 install wasn’t done with the main Microsoft GitHub repo but instead VirtuallyFun’s owndos400branch. Dos400 forces the 4.0 version of MS-DOS andpatches out issues like a bug in msload.asmthat prevented booting from the hard drive. This bug was diagnosed by Michal Necasek, who readers of the previous story will recognize as the owner ofOS/2 Museumand noted critic of the initial MS-DOS 4 release.
With bugs fixed through his own GitHub branch, Virtually Fun was able to share a full video demonstrating MS-DOS 4 compilation using DOSBox and Qemu. The video is seventeen minutes long and includes ongoing commentary on exact workarounds being used and bugs being addressed.
VirtuallyFun’s IBM PS/2 Build and Known Specs
It’s worth noting that VirtuallyFun, akaNeozeed, has quite a presence on both YouTube and GitHub as a retro hardware enthusiast. This includes a video testing out the rare pre-release MicrosoftOS/2 buildwe mentioned earlier, and tons of small applications or software branches. Considering the development background, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Neozeed start playing games likeAlien Rampage (1996), the most visceral MS-DOS 4 action exclusive.
Or Neozeed did all of this just to see if it would work, and having satisfied their curiosity with a working MS-DOS 4 install on their very own IBM PS/2, they don’t need anything else. Though considering MS-DOS 4’s notorious RAM demands of up to 92 KB, maximum gaming performance is likely best with a “downgraded” operating system. Somehow,that paradigm still rings truetoday.
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Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.
