I was always a DOS geek and the first thing I did was swap the ; and : so c: was not a shift key operation.
The ` key next to the 1 that nobody uses is *.*
I also made the F keys do things. At work I used a 3270/PC keyboard with 24 F keys and they all did something.
Some F keys that still get loaded into my W/98 DOS box are F8 is "dir/w/p", F4 is "| more <enter>".
F9 is always exit, even in my dBase programs.
On my DOS native machine F6 directs LPT1 to a file F7 switches it back. F5 appends >prn to the line and <enter>.