The Dink Network

This year I am taking a course in Computer Science learning C++. My instructor persists that every student should get a copy of Windows 98 and TurboC. So I dug up my old copy of the Windows 98 and with great regret un- installed Vista. When I ran the set up of Windows 98 everything was going fine. It formatted one of the drives, copied all the files, I entered the CD Key. But while finalizing the setup it displayed some fatal error. I have tried running the setup 20 times but it still displays the same error when it reaches that point on the setup. So I decided to only use MS-DOS. Now I don't know how to install that OS. I have never installed it before in my life. I don't even have a setup file. Is it possible to legally download a copy of MS-DOS? How do I install it... There is nothing much I can find on Google. Perhaps some of the old guys here with experience of using old computers can give some help...

LOl, I still find it quite odd to be using MS-DOS, an obsolete software especially on my machine which I have upgraded to a GeForce 8800GTX and COre 2 Duo processor.

Try searching for DOS start-up/boot disk.

What's so special about Win98 ..?

Maybe the teacher wants Turbo C to feel at home...

Bullcrap. Either this is a very bad joke, or you should get out of that class and teach it yourself or something. Hint: wikibooks. I have no idea *how* good it is, but I have yet to be let down by a programming book on there.

While an IDE is a handy program, you should be able to just use notepad to write your programs in. The wikibook may have more info about what tools to use.

If you really want to continue with the course... Wishing you good luck is all I can do. I never had trouble installing Windows 98, but then again, I never had Vista on my machine.

Your hardware might be too new for windows 98.

Ok, here are some suggestions:
1. Dosbox -not sure if it works, but since it works fine in emulating old dos games, why not?

2. Virtual Box, VMWare, or other tools for virtual machines, so you can install an operating system inside it, and still use your crappy Vista(my advice: switch to XP).

3. FreeDos, which you can install either directly on your computer, or on a virtual machine, as described at 2.

Or, best solution on my opinion is Dev-C++, which I think is much better than TurboC, because it uses gcc(for example, in TurboC, you can't use more than 64kb of memory). Still, you don't have some Borland-specific functions, like clrscr() and such, so it's up to you.
Good luck!

I don't know about Vista, but the C++ and Pascal work nicely with XP SP2 (just use some of shells like FAR (or Dos Navigator, Norton Commander etc) to start them). DOSBOX is a nice program for old games, but I am not sure you have to use it for C++.
I am not sure the '98 will be able to work on your machine at all, especially with NTFS.

You could also try Code::Blocks, a free C++ IDE which supports quite a few compilers.

Codeblocks is rather nice. I had enormous amounts of trouble with the debugger, though - I had my files under some folder that had a space (or some other appartently illegal character, I forget which) in its name, and that caused the debugger to not work at all. Plus I hate the way it doesn't auto-complete my wavy brackets.

(Then again, if you're used to notepaddy things, I guess its nice. We switched to Codeblocks right after completing a Java course using Eclipse as the IDE, so... it felt very plain at first.)

But, it was easy to start up and start writing code. Probably the debugger works fine, too, if you're using sensible paths for your files. I'll recommend it