Windows NT 😁

Windows 3.11 with tcp/ip seems to work fine here, never bothered to get it working under dos itself. Windows 7 can find the machine easily enough and transfer files.

Variously a 3c509b (in my 286), Realtek 8139c (in my 486) and Xircom PCMCIA (in my IBM P166 Thinkpad) along with mTCP - either using the ftp client to 'pull' things from other machines, or using the ftp server to 'push' from others.

All the ethernet packet drivers I'm using are unloadable, so you don't lose any memory when you simply want to transfer files - just load the packet driver, fire up the ftp client or server, then unload the packet driver when you've finished transferring files.

mTCP all the way (thanks to megatron-uk that first wrote about it here! 😀 )
On my 5x86/133mhz mTCP is 3-4 times faster than wfw3.11 with tcp/ip-32bit.

As a sidenote the author of FlashFXP has tweaked it to fully work with mTCP 's ftpserver 😊

I have a DOS 3.5" 1.44MB floppy disk which loads the ethernet card driver, then a TCP/IP driver, and then the IBM client for NetBIOS over TCP/IP, so that I can map to a drive letter shared folders in other machines, mainly those other machines are Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Samba/Linux.

This way I can transfer files in/out of my DOS machines, but more importantly I can make GHOST raw-level backups of my Xenix tests and installations and dump them on a network file server, and also restore the Ghost back into the machine through the network when it is needed.

I mainly use Microsoft's SMB network client through IPX, because it's simple and integrates nicely in the OS. Just map any drive letter to a shared folder on a windows system and you can use it in DOS as if it was a physical hard drive.
It's not very slow either. You can easily install a large game on your windows box, then play it over the network in DOS without anything slowing down. Of course, windows 2000 or mTCP's FTP client is still much faster and I'll use that if I have to copy several GBs within a few minutes.

If all you need is a shared drive on the network MS LANMAN or perhaps the earlier Novell Netware client programs (with a dedicated server) is the way to go.

mTCP does not have a utility to provide a shared drive letter. But it can do file transfer as both an FTP client and server (noted above) and grab files directly from an HTTP server using htget. And then there are the other applications in it for setting the date/time from a network time server, a Telnet client, and IRCjr. I look at it more as a suite of programs to make the machine useful on a network, not just as a file transfer solution. (IRCing from original hardware is fun!)

(Fun tip: Using the included "netcat" program you can even print directly from your DOS machine over the network to a printer! I need to write that trick up ...)

mTCP looks great - I'll try that out tonight. What I was doing before was enough for just pulling files from my XP machine, but MS's DOS network client doesn't let the DOS machine act as a server, which I'd like so I can backup some of its 17-year-old hard drive over the network. 😀 mTCP's FTP server component looks like a good solution to that. Plus it frees me from dependence on IPX/SPX, which I'd rather not have to try and get working on Vista/7 whenever I finally ditch the XP machine.

I use NetWare which works great on PCs with HDDs. Unfortunately my PS/2s with DS/DD FDDs and no HDDs can only load IPX and then use FastLynx. I cannot map drive letters because the NetWare client is too large for DS/DD diskettes. So right now I am stuck with FastLynx with a LapLink cable.

Any thoughts on how to drive map from a DS/DD diskette? Thanks. 😁

if it just between two computer connected via LPT or COM port, i simply use Norton Commander back then.

Lately I swap hardware often, and the temporary Slot-1 and Socket-7 builds remain disconnected.
The Windows 98SE 'Winimized' install boots fast even on 100MHz, it can interface with USB mass storage.
Leaving the windows network and sound services disabled probably aids the quick startup.
Often the primary disk is a removable SD-card anyways.

It is just fun to use a real network setup. I have a IBM PS/2 Model 30 8086 8530 with a NE1000 (OEM) and the same with an EtherLink II. It would be nice to use 10MPBS rather than the LapLink connection. 😊

I love my sneaker net 😀