You'd transfer the program to a usb flash drive. Should be a simple copy/paste. There are programs out there that let you boot into dos off the flash drive. If you dont want to bother with any of this you can always get a USB floppy drive like you mentioned, should be dirt cheap if Dell and HP dont offer floppies anymore. I dunno if the Dell/HP would have any available slots in the case to house an internal floppy or what, depends on what PC you're getting. I know my new motherboard didn't have any legacy support for floppy drive (no place to plug it in).

Have you considered building your own pc? It would be far more reliable than anything Dell and HP would build for you. It's really surprisingly easy.

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1985 CA 300D Turbo , 213K mi