I don't really use IRC, but if I had to guess, I doubt there are any DOS dev communities. People ran away from the DOS platform as soon as they possibly could. The fact that the AAA games of the time like Doom, Duke3D, etc. started using a 32-bit extender like DOS4GW is a sign that DOS never was a great platform.
That said, I myself have done some DOS development recently. Obviously, it's just for fun and nostalgia.
I showed off one of my simple games in this thread: My Borland Turbo C++ game! [video]
And only a couple months ago I wrote a simple visualizer on my 386 which you can see here: http://youtu.be/vgkH1zVXdoo
Both projects you see above I wrote in Borland Turbo C++ with the BGI graphics library, but shortly into that visualizer project I realized I need to dump that library forever. It is just not good for fast animation like games. After some research into what is out there, I ended up installing DJGPP with the Allegro graphics library, although I have yet to do anything with it.
Most recently I've been learning x86 assembly for the first time with the intention of eventually doing some simple but fun graphics programming in assembly, sort of like old school demos.
If you do find any sort of DOS dev community, or start one, let me/us know!
- AMD 386 DX/40, 8mb, DOS 6.22 / WFW
- 486 DX2/66, 16mb, DOS 6.22 / WFW
- 486 DX4/100, 16mb, Win98se
- Pentium 166, 32mb, DOS 6.22 / WFW
- Pentium Pro 200, 64mb, Win98
- Athlon 500 MHz, 192mb, Win98