arc and pkzip (old ones).

Cheers,

RAR was the best in the old dos days when archiving stuff. You can still use WinRAR on a more modern machine and create the Old style .rar's and use Unrar.exe in DOS to extract. When you create the archives: On the Advanced tab make sure "old style volume names is checked" then set the files size to "Split volumes to 3.5" (1.4mb or choose a size smaller for 720k or 1.2Mb), and make sure to use the Unrar.exe that comes with same Winrar on the DOS computer. I find v3.93 to works best across Dos 6, 7 and Windows XP, 7, etc.

OK messed up a bit, you need RAR 2.5 for DOS on the DOS computer to extract, versions above 3.x require full 32bit OS. Just tested and you need to grab the attached RAR.exe and put it on the DOS computer. It does work fine with an archive made with WinRAR 3.93 (just make sure external and internal file name are 8.3 compliant). For help with RAR.exe just type rar /? . Included the exe in a zip, extract to a floppy and move to your DOS pc....
added: What version of Windows are you making the Archives from ?

Thanks, I really like the RAR interface too. However, everything seems fine, until this.

To be certain your floppy transfer setup works, you can use the same version of RAR or any other archiver on both machines by running a DOS VM (virtual machine) (using virtualbox, for example) on your modern machine . Then you can either mount your floppy drive in the VM or create floppy disk images and write them to floppy later .

That said, I hope this is temporary as it is painfully slow. Below are some other recommended methods.

My suggestion, as a temporary alternative, is to plug the retro machine's hard drive into your modern machine using a USB to IDE converter. This should work fine as long as the retro machine hard drive is LBA capable .

As a more long term fix, consider a CF to IDE adapter as an addition to the retro machine along with a CF to USB card reader for the modern machine .

Another option is network card for the retro machine. If you can't or don't want to run Windows on it, you can use mTCP by Michael B. Brutman.

EDIT: I just read your "Ghetto retro PC specs", if you already have an IDE to SD, why use floppies ?

darry wrote on 2020-06-23, 08:34:

EDIT: I just read your "Ghetto retro PC specs", if you already have an IDE to SD, why use floppies ?

I'm actually working with MiSTer FPGA's ao486 core for this project. It's pretty handy to load up floppy images from the OSD. It certainly has its limitations though - not my daily driver.
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer

simbin wrote on 2020-06-23, 09:16:

darry wrote on 2020-06-23, 08:34:

EDIT: I just read your "Ghetto retro PC specs", if you already have an IDE to SD, why use floppies ?

I'm actually working with MiSTer FPGA's ao486 core for this project. It's pretty handy to load up floppy images from the OSD. It certainly has its limitations though - not my daily driver.
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer

Thank you, that explains it, but couldn't you just mount the virtual hard drive image you are using in the MiSTer on a modern PC and write to that instead of using floppies or floppy images ?

simbin wrote on 2020-06-23, 07:03:

Thanks, I really like the RAR interface too. However, everything seems fine, until this.
IMG_20200623_024946.jpg

Do not compress with WinRAR 3.93, set the compression to "store" and you should be able to have RAR 2.5 extract it. That is what I did last night and it worked just fine.

If you are looking for permanent method of regular file transfer to your retro-hardware you may use the following hardware/software combination:
1. Hardware: USB-to-SERIAL cable connected to Null Modem Cable (use this bundle to connect your both computers).
2. Tera Term (http://ttssh2.osdn.jp/) on modern PC and something like MS-Kermit ( http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/mskermit.html) on your retro-rig.

Any file size may be transferred without breaking it into portions using ZMODEM protocol.
Feel free to forget ever juggling floppies!
The speed is approx 11 kbps (if there are no errors) - rather OK for my gaming needs. If something crashes - the transfer is picked up from the moment it stopped.

UPD. Sorry, MiSTer FPGA? What stops you from editing the HDD image to cram large files into it?

Thanks for all the great info everyone!

Horun wrote on 2020-06-23, 13:46:

Do not compress with WinRAR 3.93, set the compression to "store" and you should be able to have RAR 2.5 extract it.

What should I use on the Windows x64 side?

Volo wrote on 2020-06-23, 14:06:

UPD. Sorry, MiSTer FPGA? What stops you from editing the HDD image to cram large files into it?

I suppose that would make the most sense. If I can mount the VHD in VirtualBox and share a MS-DOS directory to a folder on my Windows desktop, that would would simplify things a lot. I've used that feature with a Linux VM before and it worked out pretty well actually.

EDIT: Success! was able to mount it as a drive with ImDisk, which I already had installed.

Glad you got it working ! Wish you would have said at the beginning you were not actually transferring from a New machine to a Real old one.Transferring to some emulator does make a big difference in how you need to do things.

I'm actually still curious what software would work on the Windows x64 side. This could be useful with some older hardware I have.

I suggest forgetting about spanning entirely. Instead, just make an archive and slice it up manually with a file-splitting tool. The advantage is that you don't need any fancy utilities to join up a split file: just use

1copy /b part1+part2+part3 whatever.zip