The only differculty is you need to drop the security/disable settings of modern windows SMB2 & 3 iirc.
I don't use it so others can provide more detail I'm sure.

pleonard wrote:

Curious what the current state of ease/difficulty is to get that MS Network Client for DOS to mount modern SMB shares, for example from a Synology server on a local network?

It's at least as difficult as getting Windows 95 or Windows 3.1 to mount modern SMB shares – so you have to enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP, and enable LM hashes (which are a potential security vulnerability, I think), and figure out all the other not-so-fun stuff.

Apparently there's also a version of smbclient for DOS, but that's functionally identical to an FTP client and doesn't actually let you "mount" the share.

All you need to go is the following to my knowledge....I grabbed this from elsewhere. I did the same thing in my Windows 7 machine. Instead of using my DOS/WFWG box(es) to connect to the modern machine, I do all administration FROM the modern machine in the modern Windows. It also works better that way for me at least.

1) Run: gpedit.msc

2) Find:

Console Root -> Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Windows Settings -> -> Security Settings -> Local Policies ->Security Options

When you're there change the following policies

3) Microsoft network client: Send unencrypted password to third-party SMB server: Switch it to "Enabled".

4) Network security: LAN Manager authentication level: Select the option: Send LM & NTLM - use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated.

5) Reboot

6) Successfully connect!

pleonard wrote:

Curious what the current state of ease/difficulty is to get that MS Network Client for DOS to mount modern SMB shares, for example from a Synology server on a local network?

I use a single NAS appliance (an older D-Link DNS-323) with ALL my PC's... from my IBM XT 5160 (using DOS 5.0 and the MS Network Client for DOS) all the way to my Core i7 running Win8.1. I don't have a single problem mounting SMB shares from any of them.

The IBM 5160 was a bit of a challenge because some of the ODI drivers require a 286. Fortunately, I have a Orchid TinyTurbo XT board with a 286 proc on it that I can flip on when doing network stuff on the XT.

I basically have two sets of config.sys/autoexec.bat files for the XT. Since MS Network Client for DOS eats a lot of memory, I have a set of boot up files that only load up the network stuff when I need to copy files to/from the XT. Then I have a set of boot-up files for everything else. I use a batch file to switch between the two sets of startup files and reboot as needed. I would use DOS boot menus, but they aren't supported in DOS 5.

Long story short, I don't think you'll have any issues using MS Network Client for DOS on anything newer than an XT as long as you can find ODI drivers for your NIC (intel and 3com NIC's are your best bet).

It's certainly not rocket science 😉 I use D-Link DE220s and GeniusLan(kye) ISA NICs without any problems whatsoever.

With a little patch you can even get the MS Dos Client to act as an smb server.

QBiN wrote:

The IBM 5160 was a bit of a challenge because some of the ODI drivers require a 286. Fortunately, I have a Orchid TinyTurbo XT board with a 286 proc on it that I can flip on when doing network stuff on the XT.

A NEC V20 would probably also do the trick, but not as conveniently switchable, and I see that it can be useful to have a true 4.77MHz 8088 for very picky games.

Regarding streaming: I doesn't really have to be video streaming, I think it is useful to install some software from the network drive without copying the setup files first, open zip files without downloading them completely, maybe even running games or applications from the network drive.

I have used MS Network Client 3.0 quite a bit for DOS file sharing. I prefer just the NWLINK or IPX protocol because it uses the least amount of conventional memory when much of it is loaded high, usually leaves me with about 553K. Netbeui uses a little more and TCP/IP uses a lot more memory. On an XT it's a different story. Is there a slimmer option for file sharing? perhaps something that uses the IPX/ODI packet driver? I like IPX because many of the old games use it for network play and it's pretty lightweight and simple to set up and use. I also like that I can fit MS Network Client (just the essentials of course) on a single floppy boot disk with some basic tools and boot up any of my boxes with networked drives, handy for backups and file sharing, reformatting, etc.

IPX isn't supported on versions of windows after XP. For now I have a Windows XP box sharing files with all the older machines using older windows or DOS. All my files are on a Windows 7 box and I copy over what I need to share. What would be really helpful is if I could take a windows 7/10 mapped drive to the windows XP box, then have that windows XP box share the mapped drive over IPX. I haven't figured out a way to do that yet, tried sharing a symbolic link but that didn't work. I'd switch over to TCP/IP with MS network client if it didn't take so much memory. Does anyone here use a different DOS TCP/IP stack that is lighter than MS Client? If I could use TCP/IP then I could probably set up a Windows XP file server in VirtualBox on the Windows 7/10 server with access to the same files. Then I wouldn't have to sync files between two servers. AND I wouldn't have to modify the windows 7/10 box AND I could secure access to it with VirtualBox. I do like the NAS and FTP options mentioned but, honestly, I like the way I already have things set up. Isn't this part of the fun here, figuring out how to making old things work again? in 2021?

One last thought/question (just spilling my thoughts here).. If I set up an FTP server. Is there a way to "map a drive letter" to an FTP share in DOS? I've been hooked on Norton Commander 1.0 since the 90s and I like the ease of accessing files through a shell or dos prompt rather than FTP commands. I'm thinking about my DOS only systems here. I know this is an old thread here but...

9x or below doesn't support mapping drive to FTP shares, maybe 3rd party software exists, I've never looked into that .

Couldn't you setup that XP fileserver in Virtualbox and install both IPX and TCP? that way each PC can connect using its protocol of choice.
(I'd probably use some version of Windows server though, not needed but as you say it's part of the fun)

The way I always did it was pretty simple...

Setup windows 95 for Folder and Print Sharing, then setup your shares.

In Windows 8.x I'd have to disable sending encrypted passwords to the 3rd party smb server (Win95) under administration.

Then I'd just copy/move/modify files through SMB on the Win95 machine as usual, "pushing" from the Win 8/10 device.

I don't really do this anymore though since I have Linux, so usually I'm using FTPSRV in mTCP instead and FileZilla on the Linux box. It's just easier for me, though I have some issues with corrupt data at times (still fine tuning my settings).

pleonard wrote on 2015-04-14, 18:15:

Jorpho wrote:

Well, sure, there's the Microsoft networking client for DOS. But again, the only advantage there is that you can stream data and it most definitely isn't as easy to get going as FTP, at least these days. (It takes up a big chunk of RAM, too.)

Curious what the current state of ease/difficulty is to get that MS Network Client for DOS to mount modern SMB shares, for example from a Synology server on a local network?

You need to enable SMB1 on your syno. But you don't want to do that, as that's very insecure.

I made a little VM into my PC, which mounts the shares from Synology, and then reshares them in SMB1. I don't keep that VM running all the time, but when i do this retro stuff, i start the VM in the background.

(My VM also does dial-up service provider over COM port and soon is going to do proxy to serve time-appropriate webpages transparently from web archive.)