I did put ISA ethernet card and I did set up dos ftp server on my 486 33Mhz dos retro PC, it works perfectly when I want to transfer dos games to the PC.

You can do it other way around too and set the ftp server on another computer and use ftp client to transfer on the dos PC.

CF/SD -> IDE are good. CF is direct connection, SD need some intelligence, because it doesn't share the IDE protocol.

Some motherboards will not see harddrives larger than ~500MB. Solution on Hard Drive overlay like OnTrack or EzDrive. (At boot time, modifies bios, then exits, therefore no ram usage!)
FAT16 has 2GB partition limit, but nobody denies you to create 4x2GB partitions on 8GB memory card.

That's for the physical storage...

There are also options to mount a folder shared from your modern computer as a network drive in DOS. For that you need a network card and Microsoft Network Client 3.0.
Downside is that when you start all the things and mount the folders etc, quite substantial amout of ram will get used.

I don't think there are any more that convinient and easy solutions...

I used CD emulator tools back in the mid to mid/late 90's (95-97/98). Yet that was an TSR that was loaded, and referred to a directory as a drive. That way (I think I remember this correctly), I would copy all the content of a CD, file by file, and have them all in that directory.

As far as gotek'ish drives, that have CD images stored on a USB key. Then I have not seen any here on Vogons to this date. I think it eighter is too expensive to be widespread, or it is just an urban legend.

Regarding loading ISO's into emulated CD drive under DOS, there are also easy options: http://adoxa.altervista.org/shsucdx/

EtherDFS - http://etherdfs.sourceforge.net/ - is good for copying over games. I think it can run software off the network drive, but whenever I do that it seems... unstable. It'll crash Windows 3.11 if you try to access the drive letter from inside it, but it's nice for copying over files from DOS.
Similarly, but more compatibly, the XTIDE BIOS can emulate a hard drive or floppy drive over a null modem connection w/ a host computer. I haven't tested this myself, but it sounds very promising. Copying files from a floppy at 115200 doesn't sound promising, but the wiki page suggests that higher speed UARTs (460800) can reach comparable data speeds to a floppy disk, and seek times should be much lower. https://code.google.com/archive/p/xtideuniver … rialDrives.wiki
I also sometimes start the mTCP FTP server on my old machines to access their drives and drop off files via FTP. Works pretty well unless you start trying to do things like restore an entire hard drive backup remotely, which I've found to usually not work, choking on the system files. Copying program folders works fine, though.
I don't see any CD drive emulators around that connect to the PC over anything but USB. Startech made the S2510BU3ISO, IODD made the Iodd2531, and Zalman made the ZM-VE300. Not one seems to take BIN/CUEs.

GigAHerZ wrote:

CF/SD -> IDE are good. CF is direct connection, SD need some intelligence, because it doesn't share the IDE protocol. […]
Show full quote

CF/SD -> IDE are good. CF is direct connection, SD need some intelligence, because it doesn't share the IDE protocol.

Some motherboards will not see harddrives larger than ~500MB. Solution on Hard Drive overlay like OnTrack or EzDrive. (At boot time, modifies bios, then exits, therefore no ram usage!)
FAT16 has 2GB partition limit, but nobody denies you to create 4x2GB partitions on 8GB memory card.

That's for the physical storage...

There are also options to mount a folder shared from your modern computer as a network drive in DOS. For that you need a network card and Microsoft Network Client 3.0.
Downside is that when you start all the things and mount the folders etc, quite substantial amout of ram will get used.

I don't think there are any more that convinient and easy solutions...

Network was something I considered by I have zero experience with DOS based networking - it wasn't until 1999 that I got a modem and before that, any networking was done over null modem. I also have no network card that old in my inventory so I'd have to find an old DOS compatible one which seems quite expensive if I look on ebay. Hmmm I may have to do some digging.

If your motherboard supports it, MS-DOS 7.1 (the one bundled with Windows 9x) can access FAT32 partitions up to 128 GB or something. Even if your motherboard doesn't support it, there are drive overlays that can make it work.

red_avatar wrote:

Network was something I considered by I have zero experience with DOS based networking - it wasn't until 1999 that I got a modem and before that, any networking was done over null modem. I also have no network card that old in my inventory so I'd have to find an old DOS compatible one which seems quite expensive if I look on ebay. Hmmm I may have to do some digging.

Why you think they are expensive? I can always see loads of standard 3com isa network cards for 15-30 euros on ebay and I could get them locally for 10 euros or so because they are so common.
I have also just gotten some of them for free too.

Same here. I have a shoebox full of classic 3Com 3C509B-TPOs. 😜

red_avatar wrote:

Network was something I considered by I have zero experience with DOS based networking - it wasn't until 1999 that I got a modem and before that, any networking was done over null modem. I also have no network card that old in my inventory so I'd have to find an old DOS compatible one which seems quite expensive if I look on ebay. Hmmm I may have to do some digging.

Cheapest I can find...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Network-Card-ISA-UMC … b9bFL:rk:1:pf:0

Else... Try searching with "network card isa"

keenmaster486 wrote:

If your motherboard supports it, MS-DOS 7.1 (the one bundled with Windows 9x) can access FAT32 partitions up to 128 GB or something. Even if your motherboard doesn't support it, there are drive overlays that can make it work.

Yes, and FreeDOS also has FAT32 support.

Combine that with XT-IDE BIOS to allow huge HDDs to work on old systems. And with the FAT32FORMAT utility even bigger partitions can be created (I have a 500GB disk with FAT32)

Just too many compatibility issues with dos games when using freedos for me...

Error 0x7CF wrote:

I also sometimes start the mTCP FTP server on my old machines to access their drives and drop off files via FTP. Works pretty well unless you start trying to do things like restore an entire hard drive backup remotely, which I've found to usually not work, choking on the system files. Copying program folders works fine, though.

That's kind of the nature of FTP ... it moves files. If the files are not visible they will not be moved. The attributes of the files (SYSTEM, ARCHIVE, READ-ONLY, timestamp, etc.) will not be preserved either.

The limitations are the tradeoff for being cross platform. FTP running on a DOS machine is capable of reaching any machine on the Internet and talking to FTP servers on any operation system. That's pretty powerful. But it's not equivalent to Microsoft style drive letter sharing.

mbbrutman wrote:

That's kind of the nature of FTP ... it moves files. If the files are not visible they will not be moved. The attributes of the files (SYSTEM, ARCHIVE, READ-ONLY, timestamp, etc.) will not be preserved either.

The limitations are the tradeoff for being cross platform. FTP running on a DOS machine is capable of reaching any machine on the Internet and talking to FTP servers on any operation system. That's pretty powerful. But it's not equivalent to Microsoft style drive letter sharing.

Please don't take that as a complaint. Your software works magnificently for 99% of use cases I could dream up for it. A full DOS system restoration even usually works fine if I take more steps than just overwriting an entire fresh install with the old files.

brostenen wrote:

Cheapest I can find...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Network-Card-ISA-UMC … b9bFL:rk:1:pf:0

Else... Try searching with "network card isa"

BNC-only cards are not too usefull these days. Try to find those with RJ45 connector.
Common ones are i.e. Realtek RTL8019 based.

brostenen wrote:

Cheapest I can find... https://www.ebay.com/itm/Network-Card-ISA-UMC … b9bFL:rk:1:pf:0 […]
Show full quote

red_avatar wrote:

Network was something I considered by I have zero experience with DOS based networking - it wasn't until 1999 that I got a modem and before that, any networking was done over null modem. I also have no network card that old in my inventory so I'd have to find an old DOS compatible one which seems quite expensive if I look on ebay. Hmmm I may have to do some digging.

Cheapest I can find...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Network-Card-ISA-UMC … b9bFL:rk:1:pf:0

Else... Try searching with "network card isa"

This one's so cheap because it has no rj45, just BNC. But yeah, I also agree that network+FTP is the way to go.

I would stay with 3com cards because of the drivers and how easy it is to find them.

red_avatar wrote:

Network was something I considered by I have zero experience with DOS based networking - it wasn't until 1999 that I got a modem and before that, any networking was done over null modem. I also have no network card that old in my inventory so I'd have to find an old DOS compatible one which seems quite expensive if I look on ebay. Hmmm I may have to do some digging.

I also had zero experience with DOS networking until a few months ago. Fortunately it's not rocket science and the combination of packet drivers - a single .exe or .com to run in AUTOEXEC.BAT - and mTCP - one config file, one line in AUTOEXEC.BAT telling programs where to find it - and you're online deep respect & thanks to Michael Brutman for both the software and documentation - great to see you in this thread 😀

Admittedly I do have quite extensive networking experience on other platforms, so I only needed to figure out the DOS/mTCP specific stuff. That said, there's a reason us network guys always default to doing stuff by network - it's so much easier than messing around with physical media 99% of the time, particularly when the clients are ancient and have so many limitations.

And as for availability of NICs - it's safe to assume anything ISA, EISA, MCA, VLB or 32b PCI by 3Com, Intel or Realtek will work with DOS, and pretty much anything else ISA regardless of chipset brand as well. If in doubt, assume NE2000 compatibility and use those packet drivers. It'll be slow but will probably work. NE2000 NICs are so ubiqitous that they are also dirt cheap. Of course, a 3Com 3C509 will perform better, but if you're on a budget anything with NS8390, WD8013 or RTL8009/8019 will do the job just as well.

Error 0x7CF wrote:

Please don't take that as a complaint. Your software works magnificently for 99% of use cases I could dream up for it. A full DOS system restoration even usually works fine if I take more steps than just overwriting an entire fresh install with the old files.

I definitely did not take it as a complaint ... I just wanted to make sure that I explained the nature of the beast. Microsoft style file sharing is simple and very easy to use, but also has limitations. I love the FTP style file transfer mechanism because it's not limited just to machines on the home LAN. You can reach out and grab files from *any* FTP server. (Well, as long as classic FTP hangs around. Security concerns are slowly making the Internet inaccessible to classic operating systems ...)

I have prototype code for imaging a hard drive over the network, similar to what Ghost did years ago but usable on an 8088 class machine. If there is demand for that kind of utility I'll finish it. The hold-up is that BIOSes and hard drive controllers vary a lot so error codes are hard to interpret, and when imaging data it is important to make sure you actually got the data. This is one of my complaints with other software, which I won't name but it was mentioned in this thread. Not having basic error checking on code that manipulates data is not confidence inspiring. It took a lot of back and forth with the author of that code to get them to understand that they misread the packet driver spec. If they had just implemented basic error checking code from the start it would not have been an issue.

It's unlikely FTP will corrupt your data. Unless you forget to specify "BINARY" mode transfers. 😀

Cheers,
Mike