You could set them up like I did the 486 that is sitting next to me right now.

I use mostly old 5400 RPM ATA-100/133 hard disks on my old systems with whatever Dynamic Drive Overlays that will work with them. I don't know what CPU your old DOS boxes are running but that's what I do with 386 and 486 machines when I want to store a lot.

For my 486 I have a LianLi RH17 5.25" Mobile Rack - this thing...

In the caddies for it I have the following

15GB HDD - MS-DOS 6.22/Windows for Workgroups 3.11 w/Maxblast DDO
40GB HDD - Windows 95 OSR2 w/Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools DDO
80GB HDD - FreeDOS 2.1 w/Seagate DDO (which is the same as the WD one FWIW))

Now getting the data on there, I have a few ways.....

1.) USB 2.0 Drive adapter on modern PC - Basically I plug it into my Win7 laptop ever since Win10 stopped supporting FAT32 on HDD and copy the data over from my file shares. I even do this with installers.

2.) NETWORK PUSH - Windows 10 PC with file shares on it pushes data to my Windows For Workgrouped or Win95 machine over the LAN, or using mTCP on DOS with the old DOS machine setup as an FTP Server.

One thing I've done on my Win95 setup is I use a 40GB HDD with VirtualCD on it so I can run things like Diablo off a virtual Cd-ROM Drive, and I'm doing this on a 486 DX4-100 with little-no issue.

1.) USB 2.0 to IDE adapter - I use this for direct copy

Here is my list of favorites that are not networking related:

• Parallel port Zip drive; 100MB per disk works nicely and these can run on an 8088 with the PalmZip drivers. (V20 or 80286 required for the native software if you don't want to purchase the Palmzip drivers.)
• Parallel port Compact Flash reader
• Parallel port to SCSI adapter: Lets you connect hard drives, CD ROM drives, SCSI Zip drives, etc.
• Paralle port hard drives and CD ROM devices

As you can see, the parallel port is best used for mass storage devices. Printers really were an accident. 😀

If your already using CF cards you can get one of those adapters that mount in the back of the PC like this (first result my be better deals)

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/40-pin-cf-To-ide-c … 3.c100505.m3226

As long as all your CF cards are the same the PC wont know your swapping cards and you can have your 3d Games card, Driving games card, etc, etc.

Also recommend network though, If your already running Windows for Workgroups I would recommend this over the DOS Networking client as the GUI is helpful.
With a bit of work this can access any other Windows PC up to Win10

FTP such as mtcp is faster and more efficient, It is a bit more intimidating if you haven't ever used ftp before though.

chinny22 wrote:

If your already using CF cards you can get one of those adapters that mount in the back of the PC like this (first result my be […]
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If your already using CF cards you can get one of those adapters that mount in the back of the PC like this (first result my be better deals)

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/40-pin-cf-To-ide-c … 3.c100505.m3226

As long as all your CF cards are the same the PC wont know your swapping cards and you can have your 3d Games card, Driving games card, etc, etc.

Also recommend network though, If your already running Windows for Workgroups I would recommend this over the DOS Networking client as the GUI is helpful.
With a bit of work this can access any other Windows PC up to Win10

FTP such as mtcp is faster and more efficient, It is a bit more intimidating if you haven't ever used ftp before though.

I considered something similar to the link above but wanted to avoid Compact Flash because of their low write speed and they're getting harder and harder to find and only my really old stuff can even read them. If they had something similar for regular SD cards, it would be an easy choice. I may still get one of these, though - they're dirt cheap and better than nothing.

As for the network solution: I googled a bit and saw very little info on how to get things set up and I'd rather not have my mind explode trying to get things to work without a decent tutorial since I know next to nothing about pre-99 networking. Networking is annoying enough in modern days and I heard it was much worse "back in the day". Unless someone knows of a place where there's plenty of info on networking for DOS and old machines?

SD->IDE adapters do exist. They cost a bit more, because it must be intelligent enough to actually convert the SD card's protocol to IDE protocol.
Random quick searches, definitely not the cheapest offers:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/44-Pin-Male-IDE-To-S … &frcectupt=true
https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-SD-To-3-5-40Pin- … &frcectupt=true

Microsoft Network Client 3.0 with standard 3com NIC (supported out of the box) was pretty much next-next-next-finish and then quick google of how to use "net" command in dos to mount shared folders as drives.

I've found PCem emulator to be a perfect testing ground for general testing and learning before going on to real hardware. Though, beware, networking is weird with it, so better to play around with networking on real hardware. 😀

I used this simple guide to get mine working. It doesn't have to be freedos and It works in any dos as long as you have the files mentioned.
Dos isn't for those who don't want their mind explode sometimes (or lazy people). 😜

http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Networ … er_installation

Scared of networking in DOS and what a decent tutorial? Try this: http://www.brutman.com/Dos_Networking/dos_networking.html

Also, the mTCP PDF documentation is *very* complete. Look for the PDF file link on this page: http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP.html

Try it, you'll like it ...

Thanks all! I'll read up and that.

And yeah, don't tell me about DOS 😉 I'm right now trouble shooting my AWE64 and why it sometimes plays music and sometimes doesn't under DOS and it's a real mess. I did discover that once you go AWE32 in a game, Adlib/SB music stops working for ALL games until reboot, go figure. Now to discover WHY and how to avoid having to reboot. Might just as well find a SB16 ISA instead if this keeps up - AWE64 MIDI isn't that spectacular that I need this headache.

red_avatar wrote:

Thanks all! I'll read up and that.

And yeah, don't tell me about DOS 😉 I'm right now trouble shooting my AWE64 and why it sometimes plays music and sometimes doesn't under DOS and it's a real mess. I did discover that once you go AWE32 in a game, Adlib/SB music stops working for ALL games until reboot, go figure. Now to discover WHY and how to avoid having to reboot. Might just as well find a SB16 ISA instead if this keeps up - AWE64 MIDI isn't that spectacular that I need this headache.

aweutil /s is the command that makes FM music work in dos with awe64.

Baoran wrote:

red_avatar wrote:

Thanks all! I'll read up and that.

And yeah, don't tell me about DOS 😉 I'm right now trouble shooting my AWE64 and why it sometimes plays music and sometimes doesn't under DOS and it's a real mess. I did discover that once you go AWE32 in a game, Adlib/SB music stops working for ALL games until reboot, go figure. Now to discover WHY and how to avoid having to reboot. Might just as well find a SB16 ISA instead if this keeps up - AWE64 MIDI isn't that spectacular that I need this headache.

aweutil /s is the command that makes FM music work in dos with awe64.

That I know :p but the drivers are weird. Once you use AWE32 music, no other music will work until you run aweutil again so I managed to bypass the reboot. In Windows 98, all music works including General Midi but in DOS, General Midi only works if you use the EM:GM command which is very very flakey and unstable.

So basically, I'll just stick to standard Adlib/SB music even though the AWE64 doesn't have OPL3. It sounds good enough for me and from what I read, it doesn't have a lot of problems that the SB16 ISA cards had - no noise, no popping, no hanging MIDI notes, ... so the slightly different MIDI sound is a small trade off.

Awe64 or awe32 isn't a general midi card. It has bad general midi emulation that you really should not use but that's all. If you want general midi, connect a midi module that supports general midi to the midi port at back of the card.