If you are really looking for name suggestions, and since you initially emphasized on the norton commander look with the two panels, i'd consider what other file browsers with similar look did: use the "commander" word somehow. Total commander, volkov commander, midnight commander, why not an ftp commander also.

Hi, @Projanglez ,
I don't see any problem with "NCFTP386" name, but If you really took the note about the name, then "SlopFTP "sounds unique, @leileilol probably would be satisfied (partially, until you start to write all of your code by yourself) too, and... why not (we, as human beings,shouldn't take ourselves too seriously, and those overly-pretentious DOS users also deserve to be mocked) 🤣

Now seriously. FTP4DOS ("FTP for DOS") is a good name just like @konc's suggestion for FTPCMD ("FTP Commander").

P.S. So far primarily the licenses and the license infringements were a big problem here, but the things get even better 🤦🏻

EDIT: Typos should be corrected, since they could bring some type-o negatives 😀

DualFTP or FTP Commander gets my vote

https://www.ftpcommander.com/ is a thing btw 😉

But "SlopFTP" name is still free... I hope so 🤣

Thank you all for the suggestions and feedback!

FTP4DOS v0.9.2 has just been released:

https://github.com/Projanglez/FTP4DOS/releases/tag/v0.9.2

- Renamed NCFTP386 → FTP4DOS (thanks to Yoghoo for the suggestion!)
- Swap panels with Ctrl+U (remembered across launches)
- Move with F6 (copy + delete source, recursive); rename moved to Alt+F6
- Confirmation dialogs default to Yes
- FTP panel preserves the server's original (case-sensitive) file names
- Monochrome (MDA/Hercules) display support; /MONO and /COLOR overrides
- ALT command bar (Norton-style): Alt+F1 Drive, Alt+F6 Rename[/list]

Nice name. 😀 Works very nicely. No problems encountered with this release.

Only one nitpicking thing is the regional settings. Here in the Netherlands we use a decimal point for sizes (f.e. 1.595) instead of a comma. Also the date format is dd-mm-yyyy instead of mm/dd/yyyy. Not a biggie but maybe you can make it a setting in the sav file (or get it from the country setting from the config.sys)?

Anyway, thanks for this release!

There's a problem with 1+ GB files: the size shown in panels is wrong.
The size shown beneath the panels is OK up to 4 GB, which I think is enough for a DOS program...

ntalaec wrote on 2026-06-19, 09:24:

Thanks for this! […]
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Thanks for this!

Tested on real hardware. Seems to work fine even with long filenames.

A few suggestions:
-Rename to DPFTP (Dual Panel FTP for DOS).
-A site manager like in FileZilla to choose the FTP address from a list.
-Transfer speed (current and average).
-Option to pause and cancel a transfer.

Thanks for that!

Transfer speed and pause/cancel is a feature I will build in before v1.0!

I was also thinking about a site manager, but then dropped the idea, because I assumend in most retro setups, you're connecting only to one FTP server. In your case you have more?

Projanglez wrote on 2026-06-21, 21:14:

I was also thinking about a site manager, but then dropped the idea, because I assumend in most retro setups, you're connecting only to one FTP server. In your case you have more?

If FTP4DOS has full command line support for connecting then any user wishing to connect to multiple FTPs could make their own batch files.

Grzyb wrote on 2026-06-21, 20:44:

There's a problem with 1+ GB files: the size shown in panels is wrong.
The size shown beneath the panels is OK up to 4 GB, which I think is enough for a DOS program...

Thanks for testing the application so thoroughly! This is an rather easy fix, will take it on my todo list.

I have just released v0.9.4:

https://github.com/Projanglez/FTP4DOS/releases/tag/v0.9.4

Here's what changed:

Transfer

• Live telemetry: current/average speed, plus ETA per file and for the whole batch
• Pause (P) and cancel (ESC) during transfers
• Copy/Move/Delete confirm dialogs now show recursive file/directory counts and total size

Display & i18n

• Compact size display for large files (M/G units), no more column overflow
• Locale-aware number/date/time formatting taken from the DOS country block

New features

• Alt+F9: file checksum (CRC32 + MD5), local and remote, with optional save-to-file
• Alt+F3: configurable per-panel sorting (name/extension/size/date/time, ascending/descending)

Dialogs & input

• Comfortable input fields everywhere (cursor movement, Home/End, Del, mid-line insert)
• F1 help text cleanup

Built against the official mTCP (version 2025-01-10) by Michael Brutman - the stack itself is unmodified. The project is GPLv3; the corresponding mTCP source is bundled with the release.

Download and source: https://github.com/Projanglez/FTP4DOS

This one was fun 😀

Feedback and bug reports are very welcome!

md5/crc support on the server is very spotty and very rarely supported. nice to have where it is supported tho!

In the remote panel, I can see the ".." directory even in the root directory, which probably doesn't make sense...

Regional settings work perfectly! What is the difference between F9 and ALT-F1 btw? Both seem to do the same thing.

One thing what maybe can be improved is the status bar. It shows the size both in bytes and (I guess) in MiB for big files? It should probably be in MB as shown in the file list? If I shorten the file name it's size is 576,7MB in the status bar. Also maybe only show 1 value (bytes or MB) for long file names? Bytes would be my preference.

EDIT: when I double checked the size in the status bar is correct and the one in the file list is incorrect. Maybe make sure both values are the same (in status bar and file list) to avoid confusion.

Projanglez wrote on 2026-06-15, 21:14:

Hi all, […]
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Hi all,

I'd like to share a small project I've been working on: NCFTP386, a dual-panel FTP client for MS-DOS in the spirit of the classic Norton Commander.

Left panel shows the local DOS filesystem, right panel connects to an FTP server - fully keyboard-driven. It's built on Michael Brutman's excellent mTCP stack, so it runs on real vintage hardware. I've tested it on a genuine 386DX-40, with MS-DOS 6.22 and an NE2000 compatible NIC, and it's been stable and reliant so far.

A few features:

• Two panels: local (DOS) and remote (FTP, passive mode)
• Copy in both directions (F5), including recursive directory trees
• Multiple selection with the Ins key (Norton style) for copy/delete
• Create (F7), rename (F6), recursive delete with pre-count confirmation (F8)
• Navigate directories; view files with F3 (or Enter) — up to 32 KB displayed
• Text file viewer and minimal editor (editing is local only)

It's compiled with Open Watcom for 8086+ and real-mode DOS. Source is GPLv3 (mTCP is statically linked), and the repo includes a build guide plus the exact mTCP commit it was tested against:

https://github.com/Projanglez/ncftp386

Feedback, bug reports, and testing on other hardware are very welcome. Hope someone here finds it useful!

Note: This application was developed with the help of an AI coding assistant (Claude Code).

Nice project
We will test it soon.
Can we have the files at our archive and refer to your site and so on?