Setup Help

Gentlemen:
I recently purchased a 133 MHz Pentium at a swap meet; it has Win 98,
early version. Since I want to run my BASIC machine control program
in DOS and don't want to wait for the Win to load up each time B4 I
switch to DOS, is there a way to startup in DOS without using a boot
disk? On this computer I will use Win infrequently. Must I change
command.com? Is partitioning ths hard drive an option? What do you
suggest?
Thank you in advance,
Jack C. Cain