I have used MS Network Client 3.0 quite a bit for DOS file sharing. I prefer just the NWLINK or IPX protocol because it uses the least amount of conventional memory when much of it is loaded high, usually leaves me with about 553K. Netbeui uses a little more and TCP/IP uses a lot more memory. On an XT it's a different story. Is there a slimmer option for file sharing? perhaps something that uses the IPX/ODI packet driver? I like IPX because many of the old games use it for network play and it's pretty lightweight and simple to set up and use. I also like that I can fit MS Network Client (just the essentials of course) on a single floppy boot disk with some basic tools and boot up any of my boxes with networked drives, handy for backups and file sharing, reformatting, etc.
IPX isn't supported on versions of windows after XP. For now I have a Windows XP box sharing files with all the older machines using older windows or DOS. All my files are on a Windows 7 box and I copy over what I need to share. What would be really helpful is if I could take a windows 7/10 mapped drive to the windows XP box, then have that windows XP box share the mapped drive over IPX. I haven't figured out a way to do that yet, tried sharing a symbolic link but that didn't work. I'd switch over to TCP/IP with MS network client if it didn't take so much memory. Does anyone here use a different DOS TCP/IP stack that is lighter than MS Client? If I could use TCP/IP then I could probably set up a Windows XP file server in VirtualBox on the Windows 7/10 server with access to the same files. Then I wouldn't have to sync files between two servers. AND I wouldn't have to modify the windows 7/10 box AND I could secure access to it with VirtualBox. I do like the NAS and FTP options mentioned but, honestly, I like the way I already have things set up. Isn't this part of the fun here, figuring out how to making old things work again? in 2021?
One last thought/question (just spilling my thoughts here).. If I set up an FTP server. Is there a way to "map a drive letter" to an FTP share in DOS? I've been hooked on Norton Commander 1.0 since the 90s and I like the ease of accessing files through a shell or dos prompt rather than FTP commands. I'm thinking about my DOS only systems here. I know this is an old thread here but...