First post, by BitWrangler
- Rank
- l33t++
Hi folks,
I had the PCAnywhere package on disk at some point, 4.x I believe, and I might have some 6.x version on a Norton CD somewhere. I don't remember using it much, maybe I used it in file transfer mode like laplink a few times many years back.
What use scenario I am imagining for it now though, is to be able to get into a retro dos machine from a more modern machine. This would make prowling ftp and old archives more seamless for being able to push it to the dos machine and maybe do initial install.... before I forget I found it, or downloaded it on the modern machine... got a bit of that ADD context switching problem where I go off on a tangent. Right so, grocery list, bananas, milk... dammit, where was I?
I am going to have one desk setup where the retro and modern are right there, so spinning the chair around, ftping it over and using KVM are probably gonna work fine at that desk.. it's when I have retro boxes elsewhere in the house, or I wanna get cozy on the armchair with a laptop or something where I want to just do stuff, housekeeping etc on the DOS machine(s) remotely.
Just having the DOS prompt access would be handy in itself, but how far can you go in terms of DOS graphics working for actual potential USE of a dos machine remotely? I mean are adventure games likely to work, anything requiring fast reaction screen access is out I imagine, and probably might only work with anything that uses maybe the bottom 10 stock screen modes.
Glancing at a manual, seems when 4.x was released they didn't expect anyone to have a home network, it's all, your network admin should have taken care of this, your admin should have done that. So not clear on if it's easy to set up with something like netware lite off DRDOS disks or similar for the IPX networking, to go peer to peer, or whether it has to have an actual server involved on a network. Maybe later versions were clearer or less obtuse about that.
So anyone doing anything like this? Please keep alternate suggestions confined to workalike solutions that involve screen sharing or remote access and use, there are several dozen ways to do the moving files around bit. If there's anything exceptionally amazing that only worked with serial ports, then although it would be more limiting for the number of machines I could access to and from, it might be possible to jury rig it with ESP8266 wifi modem emulators or I've got a couple of wiznet serial/ethernet dongles that might serve, so bring it up.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
