DOS Internet... Kickass!

[Mike Chambers]

Apprently you can get Free-DOS to access the internet too, this is something I have yet to get working myself (and the full distro even comes with various internet programs and utils), but that could be because I'm trying to use it in VirtualPC rather then on a real PC, and during the installation it stalls trying to find my DHCP server on my network.

Might be worth a try for anyone else who is interested.

http://www.freedos.org

i don't know much about virtual pc, i've only tried it a couple times. i've found VMware Workstation to be the vastly superior product. for a network card, it emulates an AMD PCnet adapter. it's a very well supported card. i reccommend you try it out.

http://www.vmware.com/products/ws/

you get a 30-day free trial with the download. a serial number can easily be found on google, not that i reccommend you doing anything illegal. check with your local jurisdiction's laws, as always. :wink:

i use it VERY often because i run windows XP 64-bit which doesn't allow 16-bit DOS code to run in the command prompt, so i set up a little MS-DOS 6.22 system inside it. sometimes when i get bored i'll load up VMware and run debian or fedora core inside windows too, because i'm a nerd like that.

 

[TroyW]

i don't know much about virtual pc, i've only tried it a couple times. i've found VMware Workstation to be the vastly superior product. for a network card, it emulates an AMD PCnet adapter. it's a very well supported card. i reccommend you try it out.

http://www.vmware.com/products/ws/

you get a 30-day free trial with the download. a serial number can easily be found on google, not that i reccommend you doing anything illegal. check with your local jurisdiction's laws, as always. :wink:

i use it VERY often because i run windows XP 64-bit which doesn't allow 16-bit DOS code to run in the command prompt, so i set up a little MS-DOS 6.22 system inside it. sometimes when i get bored i'll load up VMware and run debian or fedora core inside windows too, because i'm a nerd like that.

Ahh, yes, VMWare workstation, I've got that too, I should try it in that. They're both good tools, different enough so they both have their strengths and weaknesses - the emulated sound card in Virtual PC is a Sound Blaster 16 PnP, which is much easier to get working with older DOS software I've found.

 

[aquasonic]

you can absolutely use an IRC client on it. none of the DOS clients out there are any good, honestly. i am working on a DOS client of my own... i'll try to prepare a stable test version for you tonight if you want to try it.

and yes you can use serial to share the internet connection by using the SLIP or PPP protocol. there are plenty of SLIP/PPP packet drivers out there that work just like a standard ethernet packet driver and should be compatible with any TCP stack TSR's such as wattcp.

i would highly reccommend using parallel instead of serial since it would be faster. here is a great parallel port packet driver with ethernet emulation:

http://www.crynwr.com/drivers/plip.zip

i hope this helps!

WOW thanks! I wish i could try it now, but i must find an XT keyboard ... Hope i find something quickly

i will let you know when i find it! I love beta testing! :D

I am also in buying a old genius 1985 brand new mouse for my baby (offtopic however!)

 

[Mike Chambers]

WOW thanks! I wish i could try it now, but i must find an XT keyboard ... Hope i find something quickly

i will let you know when i find it! I love beta testing! :D

I am also in buying a old genius 1985 brand new mouse for my baby (offtopic however!)

cool. i have restarted working on my client from scratch recently... it's going to have all kinds of features that you'd find in clients like mIRC and kvIRC

 

[TroyW]

i don't know much about virtual pc, i've only tried it a couple times. i've found VMware Workstation to be the vastly superior product. for a network card, it emulates an AMD PCnet adapter. it's a very well supported card. i reccommend you try it out.

http://www.vmware.com/products/ws/

you get a 30-day free trial with the download. a serial number can easily be found on google, not that i reccommend you doing anything illegal. check with your local jurisdiction's laws, as always. :wink:

Interesting. I tried it with VMWare Workstation (5.0.0), and it worked fine booting from the 1.44Mb floppy boot disk of FreeDOS 1.0, UNLESS I choose the first option from the startup menu - 1, Install to hard disk using FreeDOS SETUP (default)

If I choose that, it beeps and stops here for a few seconds:

It works flawlessly for me in VirtualPC asides from what I mentioned earlier - I might try it again in VirtualPC but manually specify the IP address and other such details.

 

[Robnhood]

Internet on DOS

Internet on DOS

Somewhere... in a box... in a bigger box... in a storage shed...

I have a copy of Major BBS and Galacticomm software. Which not only allows you to access the internet but host a web site/ internet domain/ FTP site and BBS. All on MS-DOS.

Wow... that jogs the memory stick.

I just dug up a Sharp PC-4600 in a bag out of storage last night. Still looks new. Gawd I'm getting old...

I have some older LINUX stuff but I'm not a LINUX kinda guy and really don't know what I have.

I've been looking at stuff to get old 3 and 486en on the net for a while now.
So far I think the best options for getting IBM-Compatibles online are as follows:


1- A full version of QNX (*nix-based, not free)

2- Lynx for DOS or Bobcat (text-only) www.fdisk.com/doslynx

3- Arachne (Nice graphical browser, if you can get it to work)

4- If the system has >8meg of RAM, a 1-floppy distro of linux.

There are a few other browsers for DOS that I didn't feel were worth mentioning.
If you hunt around www.fdisk.com you can find them.


By the way, this was posted using a win32 port of Lynx. Yay!

MoonShadow

 

[Terry Yager]

Some of that old s/w may not be Y2K-compliant. I know Galacticomm isn't.

--T

 

[Sharkonwheels]

...I don't know if this was clarified, but QNX was never free - it was the RTP (Real Time Platform) Neutrino core product that was free for download, "for evaluation and hobbyist purposes"

I thik when they went BEYOND the 6.2.x version, it became 30-day. Somewhere, I have 6.1.x and 6.2.x images. The 6.2.x was 20-times better, and faster, than 6.1. 6.2 also had better networking support, and more NIC's supported.

Here's a link with versions info:
http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/_english/bs-qnx.htm

6.0, 6.1, 6.2 were the free versions.

Try here to see if they have the 6.2 version:
http://www.openqnx.com/Downloads.html

If you can't find it, let me know, and I'll look for my image/cd's. It's been a while, but I'm sure I still have either images or CD's.

Tony

 

[PhotoJim]

You can definitely use a Linux or BSD box to get almost any computer online.

All you have to do is enable a serial console. This allows you to connect a terminal to the serial port of the *nix box and log into it via the terminal. If you get a null-modem cable, you can use another computer as the terminal.

Basically, all you do is log into the *nix box as if you were dialling it up over a modem. Of course, you'll get faster access. Default speed of console mode is 9600 bps but you can probably make it work at 38400, 57600 or 115200 bps. I've only done it at 9600.

I used a Commodore 128 to log into my Linux server a few months ago.

You can run whatever software you want that will run on your *nix box. irssi is a good chat program if you have a VT100 terminal emulator on your terminal computer. lynx or, better, links2 is good for web browsing. I use mutt for email, but pine is also good. I don't read news much aymore but I know pine will do news.

If your old computer is modern enough to run a Linux or BSD, just do that instead. Run the above-noted programs natively. More fun. But to get online via a very old computer, the serial console route works really well. You can use a surprisingly modest computer. In fact, a 5K VIC-20 would work fine although you couldn't run stuff that needed 80 columns.

Jim