mbbrutman wrote on 2026-01-13, 01:20:

The read-ahead function will eventually get out; it just makes more sense now to do the same for writes too before I release it. Depending on the machine and the distance to the server it increased the speed by 5x, which is something I need/want for usage with public servers.

There is also plenty of other work to be done too, but I'm having problems finding the time to get to all of it. But rest assured, it's not dead.

That's good to hear! I know how hard it can be to find time for side projects .

I really appreciate the work you've put in to create the mTCP package, it's something I use on all my retro computers.

(Delayed response - recovering from the flu)

Thank you ... and if it isn't obvious, I appreciate what you and the whole team here do at Vogons ...

Thanks for your Netdrive!

I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro M10, but last year, I physically broke the HDD IDE connector. Thanks to Netdrive, it gave a second life to this computer. Yesterday, I installed Windows 98 completely diskless on it. I've made a small pxelinux boot drive of 7mb). I started the first part of the Windows install on virtual box with 2 hdd images, then I transferred the small image to pxeboot (boot drive), and the larger one (Windows drive) is used by netdrive. To my surprise, Windows 98 is fully working, stable, and much faster than anticipated. I tested Diablo. and It is very playable, with just a few audio glitches. I also tested Warcraft II, it seems to work without any issues. As for cd-rom drive, I used the Dos driver as a workaround. The internal Ethernet car is used for pxe boot and Netdrive. I use a pcmcia network card for Win98 network. I'm very pleased overall.

The only thing is that I need to kill the session on the server side between reboots.

Here is a glimpse into the future - I implemented streaming writes:

Machine: 386-40, 16 bit NE2000 card, DOS 5.
Test: Copy a 4MB file to a server that is 55ms away. (About 1400 miles.)

• Old code: 220 sec, 18.6KB/sec
• New: 17.14 secs, 238KB/sec.

(Copying the file to the same local IDE hard drive takes 4.84 seconds so the remote copy to a server is only 3.5x slower.)

The new code requires about 650 more bytes of memory; 350 for code and 300 for buffer. I think the performance bump is well worth it. Read speeds haven't changed, but I'm going to work on that next.

I'm not sure if people missed it because I started a new thread, but I'll repost it here in case was overlooked:

About a year ago I started experimenting with how to make NetDrive faster. I have the next revision of that experiment available for testing, and I am excited by the results. The new code was 1.4 to 2.7x faster when talking to a server on the same network, and 12x to 21x faster when talking to a remote machine across the internet.

I'd like to get some help testing it though. It is rock solid, and I'm not concerned about data corruption. I'd just like to hear what kind of improvements other people see on their machines. The new code requires both the DOS and server side be updated. The downloads are at:

• https://www.brutman.com/mTCP/download/mTCP_Ne … 6-04-09_DOS.zip
• https://www.brutman.com/mTCP/download/mTCP_Ne … _2026-04-09.zip

Some quick notes:

• You must update to the new server to test this code. (Your DOS machines using older code can use the new servers; if they can't that is a bug.)
• Slower machines do not see as much of a benefit, as they can barely keep up packet processing. But even an XT connecting to a remote server saw more than 2x improvement when reading and more than a 3x improvement when writing.
• I need your feedback before I go further and make this widely available.

Thanks,
Mike