DOS ain't dead

Question:

Does anyone here have experience using FreeDOS with a serial console? How well does is work and is it worth the effort to set up?

Explanation:

While cleaning out some storage recently, I exhumed several short stacks
of PC-104 cards left over from product development and testing some 25
to 30 years ago. The Ampro CPUs are 386sx/25MHz with 1-2 MB RAM, a
bytewide EPROM Socket, and several interfaces. I also have some NE1000
and NE2000 clone Ethernet cards, but no video cards. This stack was used
as a network port server with multiple protocol drivers until Systech
released the SDK for their RCS3000 series. I believe we shipped around
800 units to various client sites. The product EOL was in 1999.

When we bought these cards from Ampro, they came with DR-DOS 5.0. The BIOS
would check for a specific null modem jumper on COM1, and set that port up
for a serial console when it was detected. They also provided a terminal
emulation for the Televideo 900 series terminals as a DOS TSR program.

My initial plan is to use a PXE boot ROM in a NIC to load pxelinux, then
FreeDOS or another OS with network drivers and XFS to access disk images
or directories on one of my NAS boxes. The limited RAM and absence of a video
card are the primary considerations.

Thank you for any guidance,

Bob McConnell