You can always have a play getting Win 3.x networking going, its a challenge!

It's kind of a bitch to do in the 'regular' version of Win31, but that's what Windows for Workgroups is for. It's Win31 with built-in networking support. It's not really any more difficult to set up than Win95... a bit different, sure, but not difficult.

The reason I avoid W95 or W98 is because I use the same CF card in all my machines. I quickly whip out some parts, put together are system for a project liek recording a certain bug. Here MS-DOS 6.22 is King as it will always work. I have BATCH files for each sound card, so if there is a YAMAHA card I type OPL3SA.BAT, if there is a SB16 I type SB16.BAT.

And having to also deal with network cards, for me at least, it adds more work. Sneaker net FTW.

BUT if you have have dedicated machines that don't change, I would also go with W95 or 98 and just use DOS mode 😀

If you're going with 98 on a 5x86 then I'd find one of those utils that strips out all the crap you don't need and will never use to streamline it as much as possible so it isn't so resource heavy. I remember there was a discussion about this a while back but I can't search through the hundreds of threads that have been posted since then to find it.

I am a little biased so take this with a grain of salt.

mTCP was designed for an 8088 class CPU. As a result, it is blistering fast on later hardware, like 386s, 486s and Pentium class machines. On a faster machine (Pentium 133 with 100MB/sec Ethernet) you will be limited by the speed of DOS accessing the hard drive, and not the network (Running Windows with real 32 bit hard drive access and DMA should be better if you are going to transfer tons of data.)

I would much rather run a batch file to load a packet driver and get a DHCP address than I would start an entire Windows operating system just to transfer some files around. On faster machines starting Windows is not a big deal, but on a slower machine that is painful. Most packet drivers can be unloaded from memory easily which saves time when you want that memory back.

The DOS MS LAN client can do file sharing with drive letters which is a nice feature to have on occasion. But it is a real memory hog. I have it installed and use it on occasion, but it is so rare that I often forget how to get it going again.

With the mTCP FTP server running on the DOS machine you should be able to connect using the Windows Explorer. I'm pretty sure the Windows Explorer understands FTP. If something is glitchy let me know and I'll try to fix it.

And remember FTP works whether the server is in your house or on the other side of the world ...

Lastly, mTCP is proudly developed using ... DOSBox! (Most of my testing is done using the HAL9000 build.) It is not hard to install. Just read the docs .. I spent a lot of time writing good docs, so use them!

my vote goes to win95osr2.
and i have a stupid question: are there any 486 boards and bios that can support ide harddisks over 8gb?

noshutdown wrote:

my vote goes to win95osr2.
and i have a stupid question: are there any 486 boards and bios that can support ide harddisks over 8gb?

Not as far as I know. Alternatives are:

1. Using 486 PCI board with a newer ATA controller card.
2. Using Drive Overlay software
3. Using SCSI disk + controller.

4. XTIDE BIOS either on a native card or a NIC or VLB card

Of all these, no. 1 seems to be the most trouble-free as no conventional (drive overlay) or upper memory region (SCSI controller) is taken away from the system, so in theory it is the most DOS game/app friendly way. The overlay controlled disk has the disadvantage of being strictly a boot device which cannot be scandisked/repaired when connected to another computer or as a slave drive.

I swear by 1.

Not on a 486, but I have tested it heaps on Super Socket 7 and Slot 1 systems. On heaps of boards and for an extended period of time. 100% reliability 😀