great work! congrats. I hope it lasts many more years

MarmotaArmy wrote on 2026-08-12, 18:48:

great work! congrats. I hope it lasts many more years

Thank you!
I hope it does. The weak spot I think will be the hard drive, I have one back-up drive if (when) the current one fails.
I've played a couple of hours Today and it's quite enjoyable.

Perfectly timed with the 45-year anniversary of the IBM PC yesterday. Was that deliberate? 😄

digger wrote on 2026-08-13, 18:50:

Perfectly timed with the 45-year anniversary of the IBM PC yesterday. Was that deliberate? 😄

Oh gosh! Not at all!
I got the sound card bracket a couple of days ago and had time yesterday assemble it, bring down the monitor and set it up again.
To celebrate this the "proper way", I copy the article in a .txt and read it on the IBM XT in a few minutes! 😁

JAKra85 wrote on 2026-08-13, 19:22:

Oh gosh! Not at all! I got the sound card bracket a couple of days ago and had time yesterday assemble it, bring down the monito […]
Show full quote

digger wrote on 2026-08-13, 18:50:

Perfectly timed with the 45-year anniversary of the IBM PC yesterday. Was that deliberate? 😄

Oh gosh! Not at all!
I got the sound card bracket a couple of days ago and had time yesterday assemble it, bring down the monitor and set it up again.
To celebrate this the "proper way", I copy the article in a .txt and read it on the IBM XT in a few minutes! 😁

That's an awesome plan. Enjoy!

Do you want to try something even cooler? Run os8088 on it, and read the article in a Markdown file in the included editor. 😍

digger wrote on 2026-08-13, 19:30:

JAKra85 wrote on 2026-08-13, 19:22:

Oh gosh! Not at all! I got the sound card bracket a couple of days ago and had time yesterday assemble it, bring down the monito […]
Show full quote

digger wrote on 2026-08-13, 18:50:

Perfectly timed with the 45-year anniversary of the IBM PC yesterday. Was that deliberate? 😄

Oh gosh! Not at all!
I got the sound card bracket a couple of days ago and had time yesterday assemble it, bring down the monitor and set it up again.
To celebrate this the "proper way", I copy the article in a .txt and read it on the IBM XT in a few minutes! 😁

That's an awesome plan. Enjoy!

Do you want to try something even cooler? Run os8088 on it, and read the article in a Markdown file in the included editor. 😍

This OS8088 looks f..cool! 😀
I will definitely try it out over the weekend and post pictures.

The other(back-up) 10MB drive is "connected" to the original Xedec controller.
Both are sitting on the shelf.
If I use the Xedec the PC freezes when copying over FTP, could not figure out why.
With the WD MFM controller it works flawlessly.

I can easily swap the controller and HDD and install this os8088 on the second drive.

So you have a genuine 4.77 MHz XT, with LAN - could you please do one benchmark for me?

I'm interested in the following scenario:
- set up an FTP server on a modern PC, and put there a file, like 10..100 MB
- on the XT, add this parameter to the mTCP config: MTU 1500
- connect to the modern server, and download the file to NUL: get testfile nul
- download another file (small enough to fit) to the HDD

How fast are the downloads?

I'm currently experimenting with Arcnet, and wondering what's the minimum CPU for the Arcnet to become the bottleneck.
I suspect that on an XT, the Ethernet can't be any faster than Arcnet...

Grzyb wrote on Yesterday, 09:13:

So you have a genuine 4.77 MHz XT, with LAN - could you please do one benchmark for me? […]
Show full quote

So you have a genuine 4.77 MHz XT, with LAN - could you please do one benchmark for me?

I'm interested in the following scenario:
- set up an FTP server on a modern PC, and put there a file, like 10..100 MB
- on the XT, add this parameter to the mTCP config: MTU 1500
- connect to the modern server, and download the file to NUL: get testfile nul
- download another file (small enough to fit) to the HDD

How fast are the downloads?

I'm currently experimenting with Arcnet, and wondering what's the minimum CPU for the Arcnet to become the bottleneck.
I suspect that on an XT, the Ethernet can't be any faster than Arcnet...

Sure I can do that, give me a couple of hours.
Please elaborate on this step:
and download the file to NUL: get testfile nul
Not sure I understand what I must do here.

I can make around 5-6MB free by "moving" the games from the XT and back after I finish.

I believe the bottleneck when using the network (upload/donwload) will be the original ST412 MFM hard drive\controller.

I was checking the speeds when copying from and to, and I would say it is between 10-20KB/s.
Currently this ST412 is formatted to 5:1 interleave, the Xebec gold rule for XT is 6:1 and the Western Digital WD1002A-WX1 should handle a 4:1 interleave.
In my case I tested Western Digital WD1002A-WX1 with a 4:1 interleave but it was unstable, files and boot got corrupted easily. Had to re-format to 5:1 interleave.

PS. Maybe it is currently set to 4:1 and I was testing 3:1 previously and that was unstable, not sure anymore. But the case stands, in my case I believe the network bottleneck will be on the HDD side.

JAKra85 wrote on Yesterday, 09:18:

Please elaborate on this step:
and download the file to NUL: get testfile nul
Not sure I understand what I must do here.

In this step no data is written to the old slow HDD.
The file is transferred over the LAN, but not written to any physical device.
This way we test the pure network throughput, unaffected by the slow storage.

Have a look at my example, using 100 Mbps LAN:

Download to NUL is pretty close to the theoretical maximum, but download to HDD is much slower...

Grzyb wrote on Yesterday, 09:47:

In this step no data is written to the old slow HDD. The file is transferred over the LAN, but not written to any physical devic […]
Show full quote

JAKra85 wrote on Yesterday, 09:18:

Please elaborate on this step:
and download the file to NUL: get testfile nul
Not sure I understand what I must do here.

In this step no data is written to the old slow HDD.
The file is transferred over the LAN, but not written to any physical device.
This way we test the pure network throughput, unaffected by the slow storage.

Have a look at my example, using 100 Mbps LAN:

The attachment NULvsHDD.png is no longer available

Download to NUL is pretty close to the theoretical maximum, but download to HDD is much slower...

Thanks! It's clear now.
Let me get back with the results.

JAKra85 wrote on Yesterday, 09:36:

In my case I tested Western Digital WD1002A-WX1 with a 4:1 interleave but it was unstable, files and boot got corrupted easily. Had to re-format to 5:1 interleave.

Strange...
I believe that wrong interleave factor can only lead to the drive being abnormally slow - it can only read one sector per revolution:

3600 rpm = 60 rps
512 Bytes/sector * 60 rps = 30 KB/s = SLOW

But there shouldn't be any unstability/corruption...

I remember that I set the interleave to 4:1 (or 3:1) when doing low lever formatting.
Everything looked good. Started copying data with FTP.
All working fine. NC started, games ran...
Next reboot and no boot. Sometimes right after next boot, sometimes after 3-5 reboots.

Tested this 3 times.

Going low level again and set more relaxing interleave. Only thing I changed.
No issues since.

Speed on a 45 year old PC is not of the essence, stability is. 😀

.

Grzyb wrote on Yesterday, 09:13:

So you have a genuine 4.77 MHz XT, with LAN - could you please do one benchmark for me? […]
Show full quote

So you have a genuine 4.77 MHz XT, with LAN - could you please do one benchmark for me?

I'm interested in the following scenario:
- set up an FTP server on a modern PC, and put there a file, like 10..100 MB
- on the XT, add this parameter to the mTCP config: MTU 1500
- connect to the modern server, and download the file to NUL: get testfile nul
- download another file (small enough to fit) to the HDD

How fast are the downloads?

I'm currently experimenting with Arcnet, and wondering what's the minimum CPU for the Arcnet to become the bottleneck.
I suspect that on an XT, the Ethernet can't be any faster than Arcnet...

Test result:

- set up an FTP server on a modern PC, and put there a file, like 10..100 MB
• done: One file exactly 4MB. 5MB+ free space on the XT.
- on the XT, add this parameter to the mTCP config: MTU 1500
• done.
- connect to the modern server, and download the file to NUL: get testfile nul
• done.
- download another file (small enough to fit) to the HDD
• done.

When making free space and copying large(simcity.exe - 280KB "large" 😀 ) files form the XT the max I've seen was 31,7KB/s.

OK, thanks!
So, it's 44 KB/s at best...
Considering that Arcnet results are between 100 and 200 KB/s, it's safe bet that even on a later Turbo XT, performance of Arcnet vs. Ethernet would be about the same.

Ethernet needs at least 286 to show its superiority, to prove that 10 Mbps > 2.5 Mbps...

Grzyb wrote on Yesterday, 12:37:

OK, thanks! So, it's 44 KB/s at best... Considering that Arcnet results are between 100 and 200 KB/s, it's safe bet that even on […]
Show full quote

OK, thanks!
So, it's 44 KB/s at best...
Considering that Arcnet results are between 100 and 200 KB/s, it's safe bet that even on a later Turbo XT, performance of Arcnet vs. Ethernet would be about the same.

Ethernet needs at least 286 to show its superiority, to prove that 10 Mbps > 2.5 Mbps...

After a bit of research I think my 44KB/s with 3C509B (16bit in 8bit mode) is on the low side.
I don't care, I'm fine with that. However it could be important for you.

A 8088 CPU machine (4.77MHz) with an NE2000 clone card managed 63.9 KB/sec send and 64.4 KB/sec receive on an 8MB transfer, while the same machine with a 3C503 8-bit ISA card hit 75.3/76.4 KB/sec.

Update:
The above speeds are with NEC V20@4.77Mhz, that could influence things.
https://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP_Performance.html

JAKra85 wrote on Yesterday, 13:21:

After a bit of research I think my 44KB/s with 3C509B (16bit in 8bit mode) is on the low side. ...

FWIW, if you want to test ethernet with the absolute minimum of local processing overhead....
Try transferring a file with my DDLINK - DDLINK uses a very low level protocol in "raw" packets.
I designed it to be very small to include with ImageDisk on a bootable floppy, hence it doesn't do IP(FTP), or SMP etc.
- I do have a tiny/simple stand-alone TFTP as well

DDLINK will run on an 8088 - I don't have one now with networking, but I use it to move files to/from an ancient 8088 "Poqet PC" over serial frequently.

I just looked, and there is a 3C509 packet driver in the collection I publish in various bootable disks.

Transferring a file, disk speed is probably going to affect you more than Ethernet speed - There are RAMdrives that work on an 8088, but they have to fit with DOS in 640k so they are small (but can be big enough for some simple testing - fortunately DDLINK.COM is only about 17k)

On a plain XT the fastest TCP/IP transfer of any type that I have seen was just over 100KB/sec. That was with a Western Digital 8003 variant, which has a generous onboard buffer and a memory window. A Xircom on a bi-directional parallel port tops out around 40KB/sec.

I suspect something is not configured properly, which is why this card is slow. Using FTP to download a file to the NUL device works and it removes the disk bottleneck, but the FTP program has overhead. If you want to know the upper limit of TCP/IP performance on a system, use the SpdTest program instead.

mbbrutman wrote on Yesterday, 17:45:

On a plain XT the fastest TCP/IP transfer of any type that I have seen was just over 100KB/sec.

By "plain XT" you mean 8088 @ 4.77 MHz, right?
Well, in this case I would expect those "Super Turbo" V20 @ 12 MHz hotrods to exceed 200 KB/s...

I suspect something is not configured properly, which is why this card is slow.

JAKra85 wrote on Yesterday, 13:21:

After a bit of research I think my 44KB/s with 3C509B (16bit in 8bit mode) is on the low side.

Does the 3c5X9CFG utility work on 8088 ?
If it does, then show your card's config!

Anyway, note to self, for when I have an XT or 286 on my bench: install there both Arcnet and Ethernet adapters, and benchmark them thoroughly...