Welcome to the 16 BIT OS website!

When we are in trouble and need an easy to use OS to bail us out we will look for our DOS disks. DOS will be the 'ghost' in our machines. MSDOS, PCDOS and DRDOS have been and continue to be the work horse that maintains our machines, performs our routine tasks, and powers many 'rescue boot disks' that save our bacon. The legacy of DOS is speed and access to our hardware anytime we need that access.

This website is for legacy 16 BIT OS - all functional DOS versions including MSDOS, PCDOS, DRDOS, OpenDOS, FreeDOS, and versions of 16 bit Windows v3.1, v3.11 and WFWG, CPM v2.2, NewDeal, GEOS and any other 16 bit OS. The legacy 8088, 8086, 80286, and other machines that use 16 bit OS are all able to access the Internet effectively and this website has links to download software that will make this possible for anyone who would enjoy the experience.

You will find links to software to use 16 bit DOS, W31, WFWG and NewDeal to access the Internet with DOS packet drivers or the 16 bit WINSOCK, DOS and W31 browsers, DOS and W31 telnet, and DOS MSKermit. The index to Microsoft free updates and a selection of links to the more useful upates is here for MSDOS, Windows 3.1, and WFWG. We even have links to the free professionally written version of CPM v2.2 here. Information and links to use 16 bit DOS or W31 to create your own graphics, tweak your low memory and upper memory configuration, do routine maintenance, download free compilers and assemblers, and do anything that is done with new hardware and software. The sixteen bit legacy OS will do it faster and almost for free!

If you would like to go directly to the website main page the link is located under the GHOST logo at the top of the screen and again at the bottom. Enjoy!

-- More --

For those of us who owned a PC or XT computer this is the display that captured our imagination. This is what started 'it all' for many of us, a greenscreen. I used an 8086 with 640k of memory and a CGA greenscreen to access the Internet until a year ago (2000) when the bearings wore out on the hard drive. I moved to my 80286 with 1meg of memory for awhile and then to my 80386 with 4 megabytes of memory where this website began. I am now working with a 486DX Compaq Presario and a Pentium 5 Compaq Deskpro. Both machines are DOS/W31 machines and are in use every day here.

Later there was a choice of greenscreen or amber screen. The amber color is said to be easier on the eyes and was popular for the Radio Shack MOD IV's. The HERCULES video card was usually found inside the IBM/Intel machines which added some very good high resolution graphics capabilities to the simple monochrome monitors. I had only greenscreens but my AT&T 6300 could do 600x400 hires graphics which worked out well for charts.

Some were black with white text which is the standard DOS display even on new machines. Not very interesting but it works. We've all seen this one, right?

CGA, MCGA, EGA, VGA, and SVGA monitors were developed for the IBM clones. Loading ansi.sys in your config.sys file and using the 'prompt' variable in autoexec.bat allowed the use of 16 different colors at the command line. White letters with a blue background were my personal preference. There were many who made simple pictures using text characters and the 'prompt' variable. I have one of Bart Simpson and a few other combinations that create a picture of sorts at the DOS prompt. Not practical or even helpful but they are entertaining and life is short? The codes for the Bart Simpson prompt in color with animated blinking eyes and some more productive routines will all be listed in 'MAX.BAT' my humongous batch file do-it-all when I can get the time to document it and put it online here. -- More --^C

NO, the rest of this website is not going to look this way. I was trying to make a point about too much color.

Color can be abused and often is. This hurts the eyes but is an all too common color scheme used by search engines and there are others equally as hard to look at as this one.

Newer systems not only have smaller pixels for fine graphic detail, they can use many colors. The GUI used by 16 bit Windows browsers, Arachne 16 bit DOS browser, and 16 bit NewDeal's Skipper browser can even resizethe text for us any time we want it to. We should be having a great time, but we're not. At least we're ALL not having a great time.

Patience and some reading of documentation files is required. Yes, I hear the groaning, but many things worth doing take time if you want to do them the right way. Getting 16 bit OS to perform can take some time but you will have the use of the machine for many years and the satisfaction of having proved "the know-it-alls" wrong. Think of it as a challenge.

Server a bit slow? Try a MIRROR SITE