Recently my 3com 24 port 10/100 switch (3300 series) crapped out (the lights just blink in a series after the power was cut) so I snagged another one. Was wondering what people with a decent sized collection thats hooked up do for networking. I might have to snag another one since its about full (and I have a couple 5 port netgear 10/100 models in my room).
- VCF South West - June 14 - 16, Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at University of Texas at Dallas
- VCF West - Aug 2 - 3, Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA
- VCF Midwest - Sept 7 - 8 2024, Schaumburg, IL
- VCF SoCal - Mid February 2025, Location TBD, Southern CA
- VCF East - April 2025, Infoage Museum, Wall NJ
-
Please review our updated Terms and Rules here
So what do you guys use for networking old gear?
- Thread starter Unknown_K
- Start date
My networking setup is a collection of stuff that was available as my network grew. It works out well because there are a lot of different things in the house that want a connection now.
Incoming to the house is a cable modem feeding a recent wireless N router. The cable modem is wicked fast on paper and in speed tests, but as always it varies with the site you are connecting too. The wired connections are only 100Mb/sec though - I don't do anything that really needs gigabit speeds yet. There is an older Linksys wireless router on the other end of the house setup in access point mode - I could not get good enough wireless coverage with just one. Both run DD-WRT.
The fast machines and printer all use wired 100Mb/sec connections with a variety of switches, the largest being 16 ports. One larger switch would make more sense but I like being able to move things around. From a performance standpoint the large professional switches are better - when one of those small 5 port switches runs out of table entries it starts broadcasting packets instead of switching, which is really bad. (I'm not there yet but I watch for it.)
My slowest machines connect to an old IBM 10Mb/sec hub with twisted pair (RJ-45), AUI and ThinNet connectors. That lets me test things that require the AUI or ThinNet connection. A hub is also useful for testing in a poor environment - hubs suffer from packet collisions that switches can not cause. It helps me test my error recovery code.
The secret weapon in the setup is my old Pentium 233 running Fedora Core 2. That old beast has two NICs in it that I can use either as a router (NAT) or as a transparent bridge. The transparent bridge lets me put an old machine behind it on one segment and snoop all of the traffic just like the machine was directly connected to the network. That's what I use for debugging when things are really bad and I can't do it using the normal mTCP traces.
The Linux machine also is setup for SLIP or PPP over a null modem cable. I use that for non-Ethernet TCP/IP testing.
Mike
Incoming to the house is a cable modem feeding a recent wireless N router. The cable modem is wicked fast on paper and in speed tests, but as always it varies with the site you are connecting too. The wired connections are only 100Mb/sec though - I don't do anything that really needs gigabit speeds yet. There is an older Linksys wireless router on the other end of the house setup in access point mode - I could not get good enough wireless coverage with just one. Both run DD-WRT.
The fast machines and printer all use wired 100Mb/sec connections with a variety of switches, the largest being 16 ports. One larger switch would make more sense but I like being able to move things around. From a performance standpoint the large professional switches are better - when one of those small 5 port switches runs out of table entries it starts broadcasting packets instead of switching, which is really bad. (I'm not there yet but I watch for it.)
My slowest machines connect to an old IBM 10Mb/sec hub with twisted pair (RJ-45), AUI and ThinNet connectors. That lets me test things that require the AUI or ThinNet connection. A hub is also useful for testing in a poor environment - hubs suffer from packet collisions that switches can not cause. It helps me test my error recovery code.
The secret weapon in the setup is my old Pentium 233 running Fedora Core 2. That old beast has two NICs in it that I can use either as a router (NAT) or as a transparent bridge. The transparent bridge lets me put an old machine behind it on one segment and snoop all of the traffic just like the machine was directly connected to the network. That's what I use for debugging when things are really bad and I can't do it using the normal mTCP traces.
The Linux machine also is setup for SLIP or PPP over a null modem cable. I use that for non-Ethernet TCP/IP testing.
Mike
Stone
10k Member
While we're at least in the neighborhood, what do you use to connect DOS machines to newer Windows machines on the network? IOW, what would you use to get the DOS machines recognized by the XP, Vista and WIN7 machines on that network? I'm strictly speaking in terms of software, here.
I use the old MS LAN client for DOS on my 386. It connects to XP over TCP/IP for those times when I need a drive letter via the network.
I'm not sure about Vista and Win7 - we just got our first Win7 machine in the house a few days ago. I really hope they didn't break it, but if they did there is plenty of Linux out there.
MY server is using Win2k server (allows classic macs to connect), never tried to connect a DOS machine to XP or newer. I still have my older 3Com officeconnect hubs here that were in use back in 1990 but they pretty much just collect dust. And I have a Tokenring 8 port mau or whatever they are called.
Caluser2000
Banned
I've got a hub with a ThinNet connector as well as RJ45s for testing older nics, an 8 port as well as 16 port 10/100 switches and one wireless router for internet access. The router directly serves a windows 7 laptop(wifes) and XP desktop machine(Mine). The XP box has two nics one with a BNC connector which is connected to a Win98 box hooked up to the TV for playing dos games with the grand kids. Why coax? It's less likely for the cable to be damaged and I have quite a bit of it. I run a small proxy server(for serving the Inet. up to dos boxes-actually its worked well with all the OSs I've tested it with) on the XP machine and run a ftp server as needed.
Like Mike I use MSs client but generally with NetBeui because of the smaller overhead to transfer files to and from XP or the FTP client from Mikes mTCP suite to the XP box or any other system-Linux(Samba running as well), RiscOS(Also has Omni client), OS/2(also NetBeui) etc.
I'm in the process of getting more machines set up to do wireless. Hopefully that'll include at least one dos/wfw machine.
Like Mike I use MSs client but generally with NetBeui because of the smaller overhead to transfer files to and from XP or the FTP client from Mikes mTCP suite to the XP box or any other system-Linux(Samba running as well), RiscOS(Also has Omni client), OS/2(also NetBeui) etc.
I'm in the process of getting more machines set up to do wireless. Hopefully that'll include at least one dos/wfw machine.
Last edited:
Caluser2000
Banned
Does the job if your not in a hurry
I've got a 40ft length I use as a temporary back bone sometimes. No need for an extra power sockets.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
All in all, my mixture of DOS and Linux x86 boxes uses some variety of MS networks (Samba on the Linux boxes). Some of the Linux boxes also serve as FTP servers, for those cases where filename case matters (in *nix "MyFile" != "myfile" != "Myfile" != "myFile" (4 different files under *nix)). I network everything from 8088 boxes to x64 ones.
Compgeke
Veteran Member
Wired network is only in my room, and mine is basically a 100 Mb/s wire running from the piece of shit Motorola NVG510 and another running to my file server which is just a random Pentium 4 machine which runs Debian with Samba so I can mount the drives as network drives from Windows, and the 40 second boot time is a lot better than Windows XP was, but at the same time this system only has 512 MB ram.
For anything else I have an old 10 Mbps 3Com switch on my desk that I can connect a wire to any time I need it, I just keep unused ones disconnected or I'll end up tripping and ripping it right of my desk.
For anything else I have an old 10 Mbps 3Com switch on my desk that I can connect a wire to any time I need it, I just keep unused ones disconnected or I'll end up tripping and ripping it right of my desk.
All my old PCs have ISA 10Base-T adaptors, which is still supported by pretty much any modern networking gear. I have a netgear 10/100 switch on the vintage PC bench, which I run to a linksys gigabit switch in my utility closet where the router is.
For software, anything that runs Windows 9x, I just use MS networking to access a Samba share on my main PC where all the goodies are. For anything that runs DOS, I use Mike's ftpsrv from mTCP. Hooking DOS up to Samba seems like more trouble than its worth.
The real challenge is in connecting old 8-bit home computers to a modern network. You practically always need custom hardware(Uthernet, 1541U) which isn't supported by vintage software. I generally just use serial connections to these computers, or sneakernet files over.
For software, anything that runs Windows 9x, I just use MS networking to access a Samba share on my main PC where all the goodies are. For anything that runs DOS, I use Mike's ftpsrv from mTCP. Hooking DOS up to Samba seems like more trouble than its worth.
The real challenge is in connecting old 8-bit home computers to a modern network. You practically always need custom hardware(Uthernet, 1541U) which isn't supported by vintage software. I generally just use serial connections to these computers, or sneakernet files over.