I use a modern OS. When my retro PC's that have a network card need access, I turn on the FTP functionality on the server to give them access to the file share. It works all the way back to my Amiga and DOS machines.

To keep the retro network separate, you can use a physically separate switch, or you can separate them with a different VLAN. (and dual NIC in the server)

First off old laptop is fine for this kind of job. I did the same thing for years as laptops are small enough to put somewhere close to the the TV without anyone noticing.
Funny enough mine was storage for movies for my original xbox running XBMC, which of course became kodi.
No need to run a server version of windows. Plain old XP will do but if you want to "play" with a server OS then that's fine.

1) Make sure all computers are in the same workgroup and login with the same username.
This is because windows by default will try accessing a share with the logged in user. If they all match then your in, if not earlier OS's get confused as you cant enter workgroup\username to force the login account.

2) Enable SMB1 client on modern OS's. If your only copying files from your PC onto the server you don't need to enable SMB server on the modern rig.

3) On your router block your servers IP from internet access. The steps depend on the router, but google should be able to help. You also want to block outside access from TCP ports 139 and 445 which is SMB1

Or
you can also split your network into 2. LAN with Internet and retro network. This is what I did. The laptop's wifi was on the internet LAN which I enabled when copying files from my modern PC over then turned if off once done.
Now I only have 1 LAN but all my retro machines are on a switch that I turn off if I don't need the network. In both cases I this setup was due to physical restraints and the security was just a bonus.

chinny22 wrote on 2021-08-31, 09:18:

3) On your router block your servers IP from internet access. The steps depend on the router, but google should be able to help. […]
Show full quote

3) On your router block your servers IP from internet access. The steps depend on the router, but google should be able to help. You also want to block outside access from TCP ports 139 and 445 which is SMB1

Or
you can also split your network into 2. LAN with Internet and retro network. This is what I did. The laptop's wifi was on the internet LAN which I enabled when copying files from my modern PC over then turned if off once done.
Now I only have 1 LAN but all my retro machines are on a switch that I turn off if I don't need the network. In both cases I this setup was due to physical restraints and the security was just a bonus.

One simpler option if all your machines are on the same subnet is to just set the gateway on machines you don't want to access internet to their own IP.

You can use the network for your modern needs and plain old ftp to connect from retro machines. Have an ftp server running on the notebook and you can connect from any retro pc no matter the OS, without going through the hassle of networking very old windows versions.

I use Win7 and filezillaserver, and the filezilla client on win9x

Rikintosh wrote on 2021-08-31, 02:02:

Implications: I live in Brazil, everything here is very expensive, and I don't have the money to buy a raspberry,

The raspberry Pi is a poor choice for a NAS anyway, due to having terrible local storage options, even the USBs are questionable. 90% of people raving about how great the Pi is are actually just using regular linux features, so it's linux that's letting them do cool things, 9% are raving about how they can hook up one or two dumb sensors to the i/o and minimally interpret them, that they could just have well used the cheapest $2 arduino clone for, and 1% are actually right, the particular combination of low power, small size, fairly strong computational ability (It's about 1.6 ghz Atom/Athlon/PIII-1.4 equivalent) linux OS and the i/o capabilities all used together make it ideally suited for what they want to do or are doing. So 99% of the time you don't need a Pi for what "everyone" tells you you need a Pi for. Even then, if you only need small size, low power, and not the i/o, re-purposing junk android boxes might be possible. (There's some that run the RetroOrangePi variant of RetroPi for example, or you can do all the same things through android) There is actually one android box some 8 years old that potentially could do NAS duty if you ever see one sold used for really cheap, don't pay much as I don't know how it would work out, all it's got to recommend it is an internal SATA port, can fit a 2.5" SATA drive inside, link for illustration, it's not the one in the banner at the top, scroll down... https://www.sztomato.com/products/Android-tv- … d-disk-M3H.html There were a bunch of those around a few years ago, don't know what your chances of finding one are now though, probably pretty slim.

However, if you do see an article about how to set up a NAS on a Pi, ignore the first half as it's probably all the hoops you have to jump through to get any large storage worth using hooked up, then see what the linux apps and utilities are that are used, put a similar debian based linux on your old PC, atom board or whatever, and use the same utils and apps.

If your laptop is 64bit capable, you might be better off ditching Windows and downloading XigmaNAS. It's what I use for my main file server, and can provide FTP, SMB services, Apple file sharing (at least to OS X machines - didn't work with classic Mac OS) , and even virtualization (so if your laptop has enough RAM, you could run a Windows server in a VM if you wanted)
In fact, I found it easier to get Samba on XigmaNAS to talk to Windows 9x machines than to get newer Windows OSes to do the same.

If I'm reading this correctly, then the laptop is going to be acting as both NAS and connecting to a TV to run Kodi directly? This does limit your choice of OS from Windows 7 or above, as Kodi won't run on Vista or below. You really don't need a server OS to achieve your needs on a home network.

Do you have a router already (ie. WiFi for the laptop)? If you do, you shouldn't really need to worry about NAT or anything else, unless you've deliberately configured it to disable the built-in firewall and/or forward any ports. Just run an ethernet cable from the router to the desired PCs and let the router take care of all the IP configuration (via DHCP).

For older retro PCs running 98 or DOS for example, dealing with Windows SMB network shares can be a pain. As already suggested FTP is much better for transferring files to such older systems. For more modern systems, ie. anything you intend to share Movies etc to, basic Windows shares are fine. Don't setup or use "HomeGroups" if using Windows 7, disable that crap.

If you really want to use older SMB1 Windows shares, you can - can be useful for older systems running Windows 2000 or XP. I wouldn't worry too much about security on your own home network, your router should block access outside of your LAN by default anyway. I do use older SMB1 sharing myself, for several older PCs and games consoles and never had any issues.

FTP or have a reasonably powerful home server such that you can run classic OS VMs to integrate better with older Windows etc. (That is how I use 'appletalk' or whatever to transfer files on my macos 8 machine - win2k server vm with macos file service installed.)

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-31, 14:22:

So 99% of the time you don't need a Pi for what "everyone" tells you you need a Pi for. Even then, if you only need small size, low power, and not the i/o, re-purposing junk android boxes might be possible.

Or thin clients. I prefer to use thin clients for these kind of things. There are cheap ones on both ARM and x86 architecture, often for a fraction of the price of a Pi.

It's not necessary or even recommended to use an old OS for your server.

Install TrueNAS
*Install Plex on TrueNAS for streaming movies

FTP
This works as well but I haven't needed it.

SFTP
Verified working with 95+
Services ->SSH
Auxiliary Parameters
KexAlgorithms +diffie-hellman-group14-sha1

SMB
Verified working with 95+
In TrueNAS interface configure:
1. Enable NetBIOS
Network->Global Configuration
NetBIOS-NS
2.
Services -> SMB
Check "Enable SMB1 support"
or
set "server min protocol = NT1" in "Auxilary Parameters"
3. Setup a username and password for the 9x machine and make sure it has permissions to your shares

DOS
You may need to set "server min protocol = Core" in "Auxilary Parameters"

9x and NT4
Login with the username and password you created on the server
Install the "Active Directory Client Extensions" for NTLMv2 support

Set this registy entry

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\control\LSA]
"LMCompatibility"=dword:00000003

Haven't had time to check this out yet:
Possibility of SMB2/3 on 9x-NT3-4x?

As far as configuring Windows for access from older operating systems it isn't that difficult.
I'm suprised no one has posted a registry or script to do it for each OS mabye if I get bored one day.

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-08-31, 17:04:

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-31, 14:22:

So 99% of the time you don't need a Pi for what "everyone" tells you you need a Pi for. Even then, if you only need small size, low power, and not the i/o, re-purposing junk android boxes might be possible.

Or thin clients. I prefer to use thin clients for these kind of things. There are cheap ones on both ARM and x86 architecture, often for a fraction of the price of a Pi.

Yup and your alternative alternative alternative, is hacking routers, USB port can be added to the good old WRT54G, that's all a bit involved though, both hardware and configuring the openwrt etc images. I have grabbed a couple of newer retired ones for a buck or so with a built in USB but haven't got round to serious configuring to see whether they'll support lower than W7ish. Probably not worth bothering with unless you have any USB HDD enclosures or whatever. I could say I made a $5 NAS due to getting a usb router for $1 a 2.5" USB/SATA enclosure for $2 and a 2.5" 750GB drive for $2 the week before last, but really those accumulated over a span of a few years and you would have a hard time finding all that in a short time frame, like, I want a NAS working in a month.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-31, 14:22:

Rikintosh wrote on 2021-08-31, 02:02:

Implications: I live in Brazil, everything here is very expensive, and I don't have the money to buy a raspberry,

The raspberry Pi is a poor choice for a NAS anyway, due to having terrible local storage options, even the USBs are questionable.

I agree. So I've ordered Banana Pi BPI M2 single-board computer that has native SATA interface. I hope its storage system will have decent performance even to watch UHD video via DLNA.

I just use an old Core i3 desktop motherboard with a PicoPSU. Those things scale down power consumption to almost SBC levels, but have the CPU grunt and I/O throughput to handle whatever you throw at them. I've done some 10GbE testing with this thing and it handles it fine - plus I can use it as media player with that CPU if I want to.

Of course vs an old DOS box anything that can reliably pump out 10-20Mbps is fine, but overkill in this case is cheaper than various *Pi options and far less limited, even if the Pi has SATA (I have a pile of Pis, all but the Pi4 in use for various stuff. I don't get the Pi4...).

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-31, 14:22:

Rikintosh wrote on 2021-08-31, 02:02:

Implications: I live in Brazil, everything here is very expensive, and I don't have the money to buy a raspberry,

The raspberry Pi is a poor choice for a NAS anyway, due to having terrible local storage options, even the USBs are questionable. 90% of people raving about how great the Pi is are actually just using regular linux features, so it's linux that's letting them do cool things, 9% are raving about how they can hook up one or two dumb sensors to the i/o and minimally interpret them, that they could just have well used the cheapest $2 arduino clone for, and 1% are actually right, the particular combination of low power, small size, fairly strong computational ability (It's about 1.6 ghz Atom/Athlon/PIII-1.4 equivalent) linux OS and the i/o capabilities all used together make it ideally suited for what they want to do or are doing. So 99% of the time you don't need a Pi for what "everyone" tells you you need a Pi for. Even then, if you only need small size, low power, and not the i/o, re-purposing junk android boxes might be possible. (There's some that run the RetroOrangePi variant of RetroPi for example, or you can do all the same things through android) There is actually one android box some 8 years old that potentially could do NAS duty if you ever see one sold used for really cheap, don't pay much as I don't know how it would work out, all it's got to recommend it is an internal SATA port, can fit a 2.5" SATA drive inside, link for illustration, it's not the one in the banner at the top, scroll down... https://www.sztomato.com/products/Android-tv- … d-disk-M3H.html There were a bunch of those around a few years ago, don't know what your chances of finding one are now though, probably pretty slim.

However, if you do see an article about how to set up a NAS on a Pi, ignore the first half as it's probably all the hoops you have to jump through to get any large storage worth using hooked up, then see what the linux apps and utilities are that are used, put a similar debian based linux on your old PC, atom board or whatever, and use the same utils and apps.

All those funky flashing led must give those Rpi fans some geek creed shurely?

The big thing is that I have thousands of game ISOs that need to be mounted, and I don't want to have to copy them to my old computers' hd, I just want to mount them over the network.

My security concern is actually fear of ramsonware as I have been accumulating this software for 22 years, I started at 7 years old, many of them are rare versions that can no longer be found anywhere. I even bought a hard drive drawer of those installed in the cdrom bay, to physically disconnect the hard drive from the computer when it's not in use.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-31, 17:20:

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-08-31, 17:04:

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-31, 14:22:

So 99% of the time you don't need a Pi for what "everyone" tells you you need a Pi for. Even then, if you only need small size, low power, and not the i/o, re-purposing junk android boxes might be possible.

Or thin clients. I prefer to use thin clients for these kind of things. There are cheap ones on both ARM and x86 architecture, often for a fraction of the price of a Pi.

Yup and your alternative alternative alternative, is hacking routers, USB port can be added to the good old WRT54G, that's all a bit involved though, both hardware and configuring the openwrt etc images. I have grabbed a couple of newer retired ones for a buck or so with a built in USB but haven't got round to serious configuring to see whether they'll support lower than W7ish. Probably not worth bothering with unless you have any USB HDD enclosures or whatever. I could say I made a $5 NAS due to getting a usb router for $1 a 2.5" USB/SATA enclosure for $2 and a 2.5" 750GB drive for $2 the week before last, but really those accumulated over a span of a few years and you would have a hard time finding all that in a short time frame, like, I want a NAS working in a month.

I have a WRT54G here, could you send me links about modifications for it? I always see people wanting this model, but I never understood why they like it so much. I stopped using it because it started to lose its settings, I believe it must be just some capacitor, I even changed its firmware once to use it as a wifi receiver

Rikintosh wrote on 2021-09-05, 17:01:

I have a WRT54G here, could you send me links about modifications for it? I always see people wanting this model, but I never understood why they like it so much. I stopped using it because it started to lose its settings, I believe it must be just some capacitor, I even changed its firmware once to use it as a wifi receiver

https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/USB_mod_WRT54