Based on a random thought in a different thread, I figure I'd ask a somewhat pointless question. Does anyone know if there would be a convenient way to get an actual true DOS environment working? DOSBox is amazing, but a part of me yearns for the days of tweaking and boot disking to free up enough conventional memory for games to run, and DOSBox guaranteeing that everything runs first time with full sound, mouse, CD support etc, well, it's fantastic for the games but not for the experience, if that makes sense. I have tried Virtual Machines, but they seem to be exceptionally flaky when it comes to DOS support, with most hardware (even emulated) utterly unsupported (which also means I can't just install MSDOS 6.2 directly on a recent machine - I still have the original installer floppies! - as no modern hardware would work).

I'm probably shit out of luck (as my request is probably too masochistic for anyone to really bother with), but maybe someone out there knows of something...

I'd be interested to find a way to do this as well. I too am a child of DOS, and have fond memories of tweaking and poking to get games to run.

You can get Dos working on Virtual PC 2007. I did it just to see if you could, it's not supported but it seems to work fine. Other than that I think you'd need to find an old computer somewhere and do it the old fashioned way!
If you do get DOS working on Virtual PC then you need to mess around a bit to get additions working for it. There's a good blog that explains how http://blogs.msdn.com/b/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2007/10/30/installing-dos-additions-under-vpc-2007.aspx

Well you can find old computers at yard sales or junkyards, or in the trash out back of grocery stores, or in your friend's basements...basically they're a dime a dozen! ;)

Then you can just install it and go...I did this just awhile back on an old 75Mhz computer...DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 :)

You could also try this: http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=845 :)

I've been wondering about this myself... I actually found a game a while ago that only works on Windows 3.1, so I started thinking about setting up a system running DOS 6.2/Win 3.1 and maybe Windows 95/98. But without acquiring some actual old hardware from the 90s the only way seems to be through virtual machines.

It seems that you can actually install MS-DOS under DOSBox, though I haven't tried it yet. See here: http://www.transmissionzero.co.uk/computing/installing-msdos-in-dosbox/

Could you dual boot a windows\DOS environment?

MS Virtual PC should work pretty well, since it emulates already-existing hardware rather than its own custom thing (especially for graphics; where VMWare emulates a custom chip, VPC does an S3 card that works with drivers existing for most operating systems).

Though the newest versions of VPC doesn't include the DOS additions, the ones from earlier versions still work fine (as grainne6 pointed out).

I don't get your question, really.

Do you want DOS emulation? DOSBox is the best way to go, no doubt about that. If you want a more "authentic" emulation just boot&install the original DOS disks inside DOSBox and that's all.

Do you want the true DOS "experience"? Well, you really have two options here: install DOS on your machine and enjoy all the pain you'll surely get (no sound, SATA controller issues, chainloading the bootloader after having installed a boot manager....) OR just buy you an old DOS-based box with a real Sound Blaster 16 card. It's the only way to "experience" DOS the way it should be, imho....

I long for the days when you had to travel by oxcart. You just don't get the same experience driving a car that so effortlessly consumes the distance between my house and workplace.

I'm sorry, but that's what you're saying here. I suspect the retro feel would fade quickly after the 7th consecutive restart trying to get enough free EMS memory for that one very special sound driver.

Spent many an hour back in the day trying to get everything just exactly right for games like RTZ and the later Ultimas.... No thanks!!

It is mostly a nostalgia thing, but I do enjoy tweaking stuff. I don't really see much of a difference between tinkering with an autoexec.bat over a dosbox.conf, to be honest. Really I was just curious if it was actually feasible, a full environment with modern hardware support, that wasn't just a virtual machine. For pure speed, if nothing else. DOS running natively on modern hardware should be excellent for games that are a bit flaky with DOSBox (for either speed or compatibility reasons). But mostly I just want to experiment and play about.

I have been messing about briefly with FreeDOS on a different machine, but I can't get the blasted thing to boot off USB (I'd like to actually try it out directly on my netbook before partitioning and installing).

I don't enjoy tweaking settings anymore. Too many bad memories of Origin's Voodoo Memory Manager used for Ultima 7, the hassle of trying to get Daggerfall to run.

Now I have Exult and DaggerfallSetup. I click, I play and forget DOS.

1) Unplug all hard drives except the one you want to install on.
2) Startup computer. In the BIOS, make sure that legacy USB devices are enabled. If the hard drive you are installing to is SATA, make sure it is set to IDE emulation mode. Turn off any anything you think might clash with such old operating systems (e.g. PCI-E cards).
3) Reboot computer with DOS floppies (you can do this from USB floppy drive since you did step (2) above), or FreeDOS CD-ROM.
4) Install DOS.
5) After you've installed it, you can re-connect your other hard drives.

Note that you can install to a USB flash drive this way too, provided it is formatted to FAT-16 and the motherboard USB Legacy emulation supports mass storage devices.
Your soundcard should work as a Creative Soundblaster 16 with the standard settings, but this can be a bit temperamental. You might not need to unplug all your hard drives but I'm a bit paranoid and so only have one hard drive connected when installing OSs.

Edit - Bear in mind that I have no idea whether DOS can cope with your hard drives being larger than 60Gb, or RAM more than 512Mb - Windows 98 had issues with such things, for instance.