as others have said, most DOS based radio programming software does not play well in a Windows world, mainly due to the control Windows takes over the serial ports, not allowing a program to gain exclusive access, multitask switching which interrupts timing routines, etc.
Most NEWER (mid 90's and later) DOS programs will run without problems on modern PC's but some OLDER DOS software (such as Motorola STX, Saber, etc) won't function properly on anything faster than a Pentium 90. So, if you plan on acquiring older legacy radios, might be a good idea to acquire a 486 or P60/90 computer if you can find one. If not, here is what I did to be able to run DOS based radio programming software on my (somewhat newer) IBM ThinkPad T30 (P4 1.6GHz 512M RAM, 80GB drive):
1.Create a FAT16 DOS partition on your hard drive to store the software. The advantage is this partition can be accessed within Windows (great for editing codeplugs, most DOS software WILL let you open files, edit, etc- just cannot read/write to the radio in Windows). A small 200MB or less partition is more than adequate for storage of DOS programs, codeplugs, etc.
2.Use any DOS boot device of your choice (CD-ROM, Thumb drive, etc) to boot directly to DOS. Since DOS cannot recognize NTFS, you won't see your main Windows partition so you can't risk hosing anything. Logging to drive "C:" in DOS will actually take you right to the FAT16 partition you made with your DOS programming stuff on it.
3.Run your programming software from here. When you're done, restart into Windows normally.
Programs like Partition Magic are great for creating, resizing and managing different partitions on your drive. That is what I used to do the above.
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Tk-350(g)
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