Creating a Bootable “DOS” USB Stick on a Hackintosh Without Windows or MS-DOS

A lot of manufacturers provide DOS only firmware updaters. If you have a dual boot system with Windows it’s a piece of cake. But the issue is how do you do this on a Hackintosh without Windows installed?  Well I have found a solution, FreeDOS, a free DOS-compatible operating system for IBM-PC compatible systems. 

What you need:

• USB drive greater than 16 MB
• FreeDOS Base CD
• Blank CD or CD-RW

Installation procedure:

1. Format the USB drive as a MBR/FAT volume
2. Burn the FreeDOS Base CD
3. Shut down OS X and disconnect all disk drives
4. Boot computer while ensuring that Legacy USB support is enabled in the BIOS and USB drive is connected
5. Boot from FreeDOS Base CD and follow instructions to install. It will install by default to the 1st drive it finds. In this case it’s the USB drive as it’s the only one connected.
6. Shutdown and reconnect all disk drives.
7. You now have a bootable “DOS” drive.

This drive is bootable and can be read and written to in OS X. You can copy any DOS based programs on to it and boot from it to run them.

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