AlessandroB wrote on 2021-10-25, 08:44:
from what I understand it is possible to put them on the net but it is not a simple thing, I have some knowledge of the DOS of the times of 486 onwards but I see that I would have many things to learn to connect them together on the network and currently I have little time having work and two kids. It could take months just to get the machines online and this could be frustrating.
Depends what you call "on the net".
IP connectivity with your home gateway and beyond is simple:
- DOS packet driver for card (3C509B drivers were supplied by 3Com and still widely available, 3C5X9PD.COM is the file you are looking for) - load it (NOT high!) error on my site, it's one of the Intel NIC packet drivers that really doesn't like loading highin AUTOEXEC.BAT with a software interrupt as only required argument (i.e. 3C5X9PD.EXE 0X60)
- a .cfg file for mTCP which only needs the software interrupt for the packet driver for basic functionality (and if it's 0x60, that's in the default template), and if you have 2 or more PCs be sure to give different hostnames.
- a line in AUTOEXEC.BAT: SET MTCPCFG=<path_to_mtcp_cfg_file>
- mTCP tools somewhere in the filesystem.
Run DHCP.EXE and you should get an IP. If that works, try PING.EXE 8.8.8.8
Get response? Then congratulations, you're on the internet!
That shouldn't take months, not even hours. All you need to customize is one line in the config file, the rest can be an idential copy/merge for all the systems you're rolling it out on.
To get FTP working takes a bit more effort, but isn't rocket science either, just follow the mTCP documentation. My tip: run the server on the old computer, so you can run a modern, user-friendly client on the fast system.
Could using an external Parallel zip instead be a solution as I said? using the compact flash swap would force me to keep the computers open all the time as there is no place for an external CF reader on the front and externally I have a few expansion slots in each computer and occupy it only to replicate the IDE-CF on the expansion slots it would be not very clever, don't you think?
This sounds like an extremely cumbersome, complex setup of the kind we had to use in the 1990s because LAN was too expensive and we didn't have mTCP. Looking into whether this would work, I found a VCFED thread where mbrutman (who already posted here) confirmed it would even work on a PCJr, but someone else had trouble with a 5160 and wasn't able to resolve it.