DOS Environment

DOS M.A.M.E. will run on most flavors of PC DOS, however due to the limitations of DOS prior to Windows 95 (MS-DOS 7.0), it is recommended that you use Windows 95/98 or ME to run DOS M.A.M.E.

MS-DOS prior to 7.0 is very easy to setup and will configure your environment settings for you during the installation process

If you plan on using MS-DOS 7.0 (Windows 95,98 or ME) you will need to do a full install of Windows 95/98/ME*

Next, edit the file C:\MSDOS.SYS and change the options below to prevent the Windows boot logo and stop Windows from completely loading, giving you MS-DOS 7.0

You will have to remove the READ ONLY and SYSTEM attributes from C:\MSDOS.SYS first;

Next, edit MSDOS.SYS with your favorite text editor (NOTEPAD or EDIT) and add or change the following options;

LOGO=0

BOOTGUI=0

Save MSDOS.SYS

Next, make a C:\TEMP directory by typing md c:\temp

Next, make sure you have the following entries;

AUTOEXEC.BAT
@echo off
path=c:\windows\command;c:\windows
set tmp=c:\temp
set temp=c:\temp

CONFIG.SYS
Some soundcard drivers also require EMM386

If EMM386 is required for your DOS soundcard drivers and assuming you are using MS-DOS 7.0, add the following line to your C:\CONFIG.SYS

device=c:\windows\himem.sys
device=c:\windows\emm386.exe noems

* Windows ME does not have a standard method of booting into pure DOS, although there is a patch on the 'net to enable a DOS boot for Windows ME, or you could create an emergency boot disk and boot off that (a bit messy though). The Windows ME patch can be found in the DOWNLOADS section - I take NO responsibility for this patch, I have used it successfully myself on my PC, but this does NOT guarantee it will not trash your system and I can give NO support for it - just make sure you make an emergency boot disk before you patch your system! This patch will modify "IO.SYS", "COMMAND.COM" and "REGENV32.EXE" in order to un hide the Real DOS-Mode on Windows ME systems, resulting in a similar boot process to the one available in Windows 9x. This will allow, for example, to reach DOS directly by pressing "Shift-F8" at boot-up, to use "CONFIG.SYS" and "AUTOEXEC.BAT" before Windows loads, and to set up a startup menu