I decided today to load VL 7 standard onto two old machines....bios says 2004 on one and 2005 on the other. It took quite a while. Never sure if its hardware, bad burn, bad download, my stupidity or a combination of all 4. But it was worth it. Those old machines run VL 7 fast.
Though kept in a hard plastic case, for some reason the VL7 disk which I had burned in November seemed to have degraded. So I burned another one, and it didn't work. Then found out that perhaps dosemu, which I generally keep loaded, apparently screws up a burn. Anyway, frustrating, but satisfying when it all finally comes together.