(Sorry if this sounds sacrilegious.)

I have an older PC with 2Gb hard disk.
About 850MB free on the hard disk.
No CDROM. 192MB RAM.

It runs DOS (FAT) because it has some old
DOS games that I am not allowed to delete.

I can copy over the knoppix ISO file to the C drive.

Big question - can I start Knoppix while I am in DOS?

It is ok if I have to shutdown and restart the PC to get back into DOS.