Network, but:

- manually set IP for vintage system. Do not give it a (valid) gateway IP
- use FTP, with the vintage system running the server and the modern one running client (like Filezilla)
- mTCP works all the way back to XT systems.

dionb wrote on 2025-08-21, 23:00:

Network, but: […]
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Network, but:

- manually set IP for vintage system. Do not give it a (valid) gateway IP
- use FTP, with the vintage system running the server and the modern one running client (like Filezilla)
- mTCP works all the way back to XT systems.

Actually I double checked and it is my vintage laptop that's the share. My experience with this setup is that for transferring large files (10-20MB) or especially folders with many small files it's just too slow. What speeds do you get?

multiplebaboons wrote on 2025-08-21, 22:28:

On my 486-based laptop, I hooked it up to the home network via a wifi bridge and used a samba share. This worked, but it's a network vulnerability that I accepted out of necessity. For a desktop, I am sure more elegant solutions are possible.

LAN is the most elegant solution.
The only vulnerability can be about the old WiFi - use wired Ethernet instead, it's both more secure and faster.
For the Socket 7 machine you can easily find a 100 Mbps card, or even a 1 Gbps one - more than fast enough for Win9x software.

Personally I also use samba v1. It's a bit slower then FTP but I find it more convenient.
Assuming the computers are behind your route's firewall, etc I dont think much of a security risk exists.
I'm just picking up DHCP address but as dionb said any of your retro fleet don't really need internet access, so you can either block at the firewall or give it a fake gateway.

My retro computers are all attached to a switch I turn off when not using the network, I do this because of the noise, but does mean 99% of the time my machines are completely off line.

I don't like USB, its unreliable pre Win2000.
You could get one of those CF or SD to IDE adapters, but it's still not as reliable as network, you have the "mess" of cards to keep a hold of, and by the time you find a card, put it in Machine A, copy the contents, put it in machine B copy to local hard drive, have you really saved any time?

Really simple way to transfer data = try my DDLINK (available on my site),
this gives a decent screen oriented interface to transfer files between PC's.
It can use:

Serial (Requires a "NULL modem" cable) - Diagram to make one is included
Parallel (Requires a "parallel data transfer cable) - ""
Network (Requires a "crynwar" packet driver - many available for LOTs if NICs)

Does not require installation, any setup or configuration, uses it's own
network protocol, so not even TCP setup.

It's a 16-bit DOS program, will work well on W98 (possible under W98, but
definately booted in DOS mode)

Does not run on 64-bit Windows .. but works well in DosBox for both serial and
network - this is how I usually move files between my DOS and newer systems.

chinny22 wrote on 2025-08-22, 02:45:

You could get one of those CF or SD to IDE adapters, but it's still not as reliable as network, you have the "mess" of cards to keep a hold of, and by the time you find a card, put it in Machine A, copy the contents, put it in machine B copy to local hard drive, have you really saved any time?

I've just gotten and been playing with a GoTek floppy disk emulator - this "looks like" a 1.44m floppy and uses a USB stick
for storage - it can have many floppy images on one stick (you can select via front panel), presumably there are ways to access
all those images from the stick directly with the right software, but at least in my setup, If I poke the stick into say one of my
Win7 desktops, it shows up as a 1.4m disk which is the first floppy image content.

On my bootable ImageDisk floppy image (available from my "Daves Old Computers" site), the boot floppy has basic DOS USB
drivers to support flash memory "sticks" ... sometimes tricky to get working, but once everything is right, it works quite well.

I use USB on my socket 7 in windows 95 , it works pretty well to transfer files on the regular , now ofc all that might depend on your chipset ,
I'm using a 430TX motherboard and that has okayish USB support but I have no idea about how earlier chipsets fare.

The security concern on a lan behind a gateway is mostly a non-issue.

I would just use samba with smb1 protocol, but instead of relying on the clients to behave, I would apply some rules to the samba machine instead - allowing only certain machines and not giving it a valid gateway, for instance. Read-only all the shares except one that is a dropbox into which you drop anything you want to send to the network share, and then manually move it to where it must go on the samba host.

If you dont trust your router, add another vintage machine with two nics between your lan and your router and have a serious conversation with iptables about the issue.

I personally don’t mess with samba as I don’t want to set old protocols on my NAS or modern systems. It is unnecessary as there are other ways to achieve the same thing.

Instead, I use FTP and FTP server running on the vintage system itself. I use modern system and FTP client (WinSCP in my case) to transfer data to the old computer.

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2025-08-22, 05:40:

I personally don’t mess with samba as I don’t want to set old protocols on my NAS or modern systems. It is unnecessary as there are other ways to achieve the same thing.

Instead, I use FTP and FTP server running on the vintage system itself. I use modern system and FTP client (WinSCP in my case) to transfer data to the old computer.

I like this idea the most out of all network-based solutions mentioned here. Which FTP server would you recommend for Win98SE?

DOS systems I tend to use my GOTEK (Sneakernet).

For all my 9x based systems I use good old sneakernet and nusb36e.

2k/XP or newer I put on a sandboxed network and use FTP.

Of course all systems that are using CF or SD as storage also have the option of removing the media and copying directly to it from a modern system.

Grzyb wrote on 2025-08-22, 00:46:

The only vulnerability can be about the old WiFi - use wired Ethernet instead, it's both more secure and faster.

There is no old wifi here. I use a wifi bridge appliance, which uses WPA2.

multiplebaboons wrote on 2025-08-22, 07:05:

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2025-08-22, 05:40:

I personally don’t mess with samba as I don’t want to set old protocols on my NAS or modern systems. It is unnecessary as there are other ways to achieve the same thing.

Instead, I use FTP and FTP server running on the vintage system itself. I use modern system and FTP client (WinSCP in my case) to transfer data to the old computer.

I like this idea the most out of all network-based solutions mentioned here. Which FTP server would you recommend for Win98SE?

Filezilla for example, but there are probably many options, so you can google a bit and pick your poison. I think it doesn’t matter in the long run, just use something that feels the best.

If your NIC has dos drivers available, there is another option too. You can for example make a boot menu and from there select booting to DOS with network enabled and then use MTCP FTP server in DOS. In this way you can for example completely leave the nic without win98 drivers and disabled in windows, if you don’t have any use for it there.

DaveDDS wrote on 2025-08-22, 03:36:

Really simple way to transfer data = try my DDLINK ...

I just tested this under a fresh install of:

1Microsoft Windows 98
2Second Edition
34.10.2222 A

Installed in PCEM - With an NE2000 network card.

The only extra software I had to use was a single floppy disk (image) containing:

12002-03-02   5:06:10        5,569 NE2000.COM
22025-05-13   7:30:58       17,630 DDLINK.COM

I did not set up the network in Win98...

With a DDLINK server running under DosBox on my main desktop> DDLINK P= /S

All I had to do was go to the MSDOS prompt, then run:

1A:\> NE2000 0x60 10     <- Load the NE2000 network packet driver
2A:\> DDLINK p=          <- Run DDLINK as a client

And then I could easily transfer files back and forth between the two systems!

This worked BOTH from: Start->Programs->MS-DOS prompt
and START->Shutdown->Restart in MS-DOS mode

I will also mention since others have, this is very secure - DDLINK uses it's own packet protocol, not TCP,
is NOT routeable, and won't go past your router!

Btw: I did have a thread about DDLINK a while back: DDLINK: Easily move files between/To/From DOS systems

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2025-08-22, 15:11:

Filezilla for example, but there are probably many options, so you can google a bit and pick your poison. I think it doesn’t matter in the long run, just use something that feels the best.

Well, the reason I was asking is to avoid trial and error and there's just no better way than to get first-hand advice from people. The specific version of the server would be key, especially if there are software requirements before installation. As of right now, I have this computer happily connected to my LAN with a static local IP. The possibility of FTP in my case assumes that the wifi bridge will forward to the computer properly, of course.

Used a share on my regular home server until they removed SMBv1 support from Samba/Debian. As a temporary solution I installed an older version of DietPi based on Debian Buster on an RPi1B I had lying around. Works well enough that I haven't cared to find a better solution since. The 100 mbps transfer speed isn't a problem, the largest files I've had to deal with with are CD images. Transferring a 600 MB .iso takes approximately a minute.

Any old NAS with SMBv1 support would probably be a better and far more reliable solution. Using an SD card for data storage is of course far from optimal.

multiplebaboons wrote on 2025-08-22, 19:50:

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2025-08-22, 15:11:

Filezilla for example, but there are probably many options, so you can google a bit and pick your poison. I think it doesn’t matter in the long run, just use something that feels the best.

Well, the reason I was asking is to avoid trial and error and there's just no better way than to get first-hand advice from people. The specific version of the server would be key, especially if there are software requirements before installation. As of right now, I have this computer happily connected to my LAN with a static local IP. The possibility of FTP in my case assumes that the wifi bridge will forward to the computer properly, of course.

I was away from home and thus wasn't near my rigs and I simply can't remember outright what I have exactly installed on which of my many machines. That’s why I suggested googling, as FTP server is FTP server and they all do the same thing.

I was wrong on one thing. I don't have filezilla server installed, probably because I at least couldn't find a version that was compatible with win9x. It may be that the first Filezilla server release is from around 2008 and supports XP and Vista.

However, I have this at least on one of my win98 boxes:
https://www.pablosoftwaresolutions.com/html/q … erver_lite.html

It is very simple program and the lite version is enough for this use. It is also one of the first results when googling "FTP server win98".

If you are going the DOS route, then just use MTCP like I said. I have that installed on all my DOS systems.

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2025-08-23, 19:39:

However, I have this at least on one of my win98 boxes:
https://www.pablosoftwaresolutions.com/html/q … erver_lite.html

It is very simple program and the lite version is enough for this use. It is also one of the first results when googling "FTP server win98".

The Lite version is literally what I have installed and my filezilla client under windows 11 is unable to connect when that thing is running (connection refused). I am blaming the wifi bridge, because it may not be transparent and I do not see any bridge settings that are even remotely helpful. Will see if wiring the retro box to my router changes things.

multiplebaboons wrote on 2025-08-23, 22:04:

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2025-08-23, 19:39:

However, I have this at least on one of my win98 boxes:
https://www.pablosoftwaresolutions.com/html/q … erver_lite.html

It is very simple program and the lite version is enough for this use. It is also one of the first results when googling "FTP server win98".

The Lite version is literally what I have installed and my filezilla client under windows 11 is unable to connect when that thing is running (connection refused). I am blaming the wifi bridge, because it may not be transparent and I do not see any bridge settings that are even remotely helpful. Will see if wiring the retro box to my router changes things.

Works for me, so there is something going on with your setup. If you can ping from the computer to another, I would expect your setup would work.

Have you checked all the settings so that you don’t have FTP on server and SFTP on client for example, port numbers match etc?