I always used FastLynx back in the day. Similar program, similar concept-- even similar "Midnight Commander" inspiration on UI.

Glad to know that there is a "No, really-- please use this! I dont charge for it!" alternative, since the maker of FastLynx still exists, and wants your money still. (See below, re:licensing) I will add it to my toolkit, and give it a whorl someday.

As for running NetWare... I'm not sure that's really the best solution in the modern era. Granted, ODI packet drivers do tend to consume less memory than MS's NDIS 2.0 drivers, the latter is better able to coexist peacefully (with a little prodding) with a modern fileshare.

Further complicating the netware angle, was the fact that Novell liked to sell their product with "Seat Licenses", and unless you happen to have license files from the days of yore tucked away in a filing cabinet, that's not really possible to deploy legally for the majority of people. The microsoft networking supplement for dos, on the other hand, has no such licensing restrictions going on.

(Disclaimer-- I have the dubious distinction of being a Certified Novell Administrator for Netware 5. Lucky me. 😜 )

Recently used DDLINK to transfer data to a system that is "externally I/O challenged," and despite the 8250 UARTs, the 19200 bps serial rate, and the wireless RS-232 transceivers involved, the solution exceeded my expectations.

Thank-you for sharing your work, Dave!

Cloudschatze wrote on 2023-09-23, 21:00:

Recently used DDLINK to transfer data to a system that is "externally I/O challenged," and despite the 8250 UARTs, the 19200 bps serial rate, and the wireless RS-232 transceivers involved, the solution exceeded my expectations.

Always good to know that some people still use this stuff and derive some benefit from it! - thanks

Bit of a story behind DDLINK - not sure exactly when I wrote it - earliest reference to in I've found so far in my own files is
1990 - really needed it back then - Not only did I have quite a few "not networked" DOS systems, but ...

As part of a few large projects I did for major clients where I had developed much of fairly complex products (usually ARM based) , built
on top of my own/unknown multi-tasking operating system . This OS had some basic network capability (units on the same network
could communicate with each other) - but no standard/known protocols. So I created a process which was a DDLINK server (much easier
to implement than most other network software) This let us easily put various necessary files on/off such systems "on the fly".

In more recent years I'd all but forgotten about it - till I was setting up a new ImageDisk system which didn't have reasonable access
to a network (MS client no-longer connects to modern systems) - took a few days of "trying stuff" before I found something in my
archives referencing DDLINK and realized that I'd solved this problem before! - Of course modern system can't run DDLINK directly
but it was fairly trivial to use within a DosBox that had NE2000 emulation.

Dave Dunfield ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com
or: "Daves Old Computers" -> Personal (near bottom)

DaveDDS wrote on 2023-09-24, 19:29:

Cloudschatze wrote on 2023-09-23, 21:00:

Recently used DDLINK to transfer data to a system that is "externally I/O challenged," and despite the 8250 UARTs, the 19200 bps serial rate, and the wireless RS-232 transceivers involved, the solution exceeded my expectations.

... (MS client no-longer connects to modern systems) -...

Not exactly true... but it IS disabled by default.

You need to enable SMB1.0 support.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-ser … -v3?tabs=server

Microsoft disabled it for a reason: SMB1.0 is a great big "KICK ME!" sign to basically every known network worm that affects windows networks, and a "I am SUPER EASY" to all those crypto-ransomware things floating around. However, the ability is still there, just disabled by default.

You may also need to turn on "Insecure guest logons" with the group policy editor, since that gets disabled by default also. (Otherwise, you have to configure your legacy clients with Active Directory.)

https://www.syxsense.com/wp-content/uploads/s … 1033-12369.html

wierd_w wrote on 2023-09-25, 03:36:

DaveDDS wrote on 2023-09-24, 19:29:

... (MS client no-longer connects to modern systems) -...

Not exactly true... but it IS disabled by default.

Kool - I didn't know this (to be fair - I never really looked into it in much detail) - I don't use old systems nearly as much these days, but I do still have a
few XP's that I might look into making able to sometimes connect to newer stuff - all my older systems are blocked from access to/from "the world"
(on their own "local only" network - so I don't expect the "kick me" sign to be much trouble 😀

Still "learn something new every day!

Dave Dunfield ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com
or: "Daves Old Computers" -> Personal (near bottom)

DaveDDS wrote on 2023-09-25, 04:54:

I do still have a few XP's that I might look into making able to sometimes connect to newer stuff

Apologies - my confusion (seems to happen more frequently after my events of 2019 *) - XP will connect to many modern systems
without having the change settings ... my problem with XP was that it won't connect to my new network. A few years back I upgraded
to super-fast fiber, and that came with a new router to connect to the fibe.

Like much modern tech, it seems to have be "improved" so much it no longer works with some older stuff.
I haven't looked into it in detail either - but basically it can see the WiFi network but cannot connect to it.

I of course came up with an "easy fix" - I just dug out one of my old WRT54Gs and configured it as a "dumb" access point (no DHCP etc.)
My XP netbooks can connect to it just fine and everything works!

(* throughout my career chatting with other professionals in the business - we would often joke that the weird thing that others
often created were because of "brain damage" - I can tell you from personal experience ... when it really happens to you .. it's
about as far from funny as it gets!)

Dave Dunfield ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com
or: "Daves Old Computers" -> Personal (near bottom)

that sounds like your wifi card/dongle can't do wpa2.

depending on the device, a driver upgrade might fix it.

wierd_w wrote on 2023-10-02, 16:12:

that sounds like your wifi card/dongle can't do wpa2.

depending on the device, a driver upgrade might fix it.

Quite likely.. I just haven't bothered to "figure it out" or "find" drivers suitable for these old machines. I have a couple of the original "Aspire One" netbooks
- Atom based TINY WinXP systems. I still use them from time to time as really small/portable DOS compatible platforms.

As I don't do internet stuff on them, and older router solution was super-easy and didn't take any significant time - I only mentioned it as my previous post
had confused this problem with another one and wanted to "clarify".

Dave Dunfield ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com
or: "Daves Old Computers" -> Personal (near bottom)