I have a NAS I built based around a HP Prodesk 600 SFF and Openmediavault

Its current uptime is over a year, hasn't skipped a beat. Cheap and upgradable.

Its main uses are as a media file server for my Kodi PC attached to the TV, a backup server for the Windows Computers and as a file server for my retro computing.

As far as the retro computing goes, I've only used it with Win 98 SE so far, loading ISO images with Daemon tools, to save burning disks.

I think DOS can access Samba shares through a variety of means, google shows a few results, I'm sure someone more knowledgeable on this can help.

Hippo486 wrote on 2022-12-31, 12:56:

I have a NAS I built based around a HP Prodesk 600 SFF and Openmediavault […]
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I have a NAS I built based around a HP Prodesk 600 SFF and Openmediavault

Its current uptime is over a year, hasn't skipped a beat. Cheap and upgradable.

Its main uses are as a media file server for my Kodi PC attached to the TV, a backup server for the Windows Computers and as a file server for my retro computing.

As far as the retro computing goes, I've only used it with Win 98 SE so far, loading ISO images with Daemon tools, to save burning disks.

I think DOS can access Samba shares through a variety of means, google shows a few results, I'm sure someone more knowledgeable on this can help.

The last time I used DOS to access a shared folder, I was logged in using Novell NetWare client. I didn't know which version though, it was 1993 and the DOS PC was a part of a computer lab whose programming course I attended. But I remember we accessed the coding practice files on the said shared folder, hence the need to log in using Novell NetWare client.

Can a DOS PC with Novell NetWare client access a Samba server?

I have set up a dedicated file server to share data with my MSDOS/Windows9X/XP+ machines.

It's a Debian linux host, running on a raspberry pi 400 (any hardware will do.)

For presenting files, I use a combination of several applications:

etherdfs: Uses packet driver to map a drive letter as a local hard drive, very small memory footprint.
Etherflop: Uses packet driver to create a virtual floppy drive using remote image files, supports up to 32mb virtual floppy even on a machine with only 360kb physical drives.
Python's built-in http server: presents my vintage file repository as a simple web listing for easy file downloads on basically anything with a functional web browser
browservice: A proxy that does a FANTASTIC job of presenting modern web pages to vintage browsers.
Samba: Shares the same folder root as the etherdfs share. Allows me to continue playing the same games on my desktop via dosbox as I play on my MSDOS actual hardware.
Telnet: For managing the debian system from vintage hardware if necessary.

Yes, I have not decided on an operating system yet.
I was thinking about Windows server and administer it with Remote Desktop.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2022-12-31, 17:44:

Yes, I have not decided on an operating system yet.
I was thinking about Windows server and administer it with Remote Desktop.

You'll miss out on a LOT of interesting utilities running windows.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2022-12-31, 13:20:

The last time I used DOS to access a shared folder, I was logged in using Novell NetWare client. I didn't know which version though, it was 1993 and the DOS PC was a part of a computer lab whose programming course I attended. But I remember we accessed the coding practice files on the said shared folder, hence the need to log in using Novell NetWare client.

Can a DOS PC with Novell NetWare client access a Samba server?

No. Samba implements Microsofts SMB protocol while the NetWare client implements (the client half of) Novells NCP protocol. The NCP equivalent of Samba is Mars NWE which implements NetWare-compatible File & Print services on Linux.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2022-12-31, 17:44:

Yes, I have not decided on an operating system yet.
I was thinking about Windows server and administer it with Remote Desktop.

There isn't any useful way of getting network drives on DOS from a modern windows host. The old Microsoft SMB client for DOS uses a lot of conventional memory and can't talk to any modern version of Windows so if your plan is to use that you'll need to run something older. If you can run Windows NT 4.0 Server then you can pickup a copy of Microsoft File & Print Services for NetWare and run the Novell NetWare client on DOS which uses vastly less conventional memory on a 386 or better.

Alternatively if you run Linux then you can run Mars NWE to do the same job (it implements the NetWare protocols on Linux). I wouldn't bother with Samba just because the DOS client is so memory hungry and Samba itself is slowly dropping support for older SMB versions. EtherDFS is worth looking into too - easier to setup than Mars NWE but a bit less flexible.