Need help with DOS to Win10 file transfer

[Glen M]

I've been working on a Commodore PC10 and want to backup the contents of the hdd so the plan was to go directly from A to B. I've got both a null modem cable and a parallel laplink cable and I appreciate that going directly is unlikely so I've been trying to get this working by running dosbox-x or virtualbox.

So far using a terminal program on both the pc10 and the emulated dos machine I can send text back and forth without issue. If I try to run laplink though it just refuses. Even trying to send a single file in the terminal software (banana com) fails but again text is fine.

I could go from the pc10 to a 486 rig and I'm sure that'd work but since I have some serial communication working I feel that file transfer should also work to the emulated dos machine.

Parallel doesn't seem to work at all. Virtual box doesn't support it, dosbox-x does but like serial with laplink it won't work.

Before I give up and just transfer files to the 486 then ftp it to windows 10 (dont have an 8bit nic for the pc10) has anyone any suggestions for alternative software that might work between the pc10 and an emulated dos environment under win10?

Or better still is there anything that will go directly from dos to win10 over serial or parallel?

The PC10 is running MSDOS3.3. I don't want to wipe the drive before getting files off it and free hdd space is limited to about 500k. The dos computer has a DD 5.25 floppy drive.

 

[modem7]

Before I give up and just transfer files to the 486 then ftp it to windows 10 (dont have an 8bit nic for the pc10) has anyone any suggestions for alternative software that might work between the pc10 and an emulated dos environment under win10?

For Laplink 3, see my 'somewhat unstable' procedure at [here].

A stable alternative is FastLynx 3.3, which uses a Windows program on the WIN10 machine. See the FastLynx 3.3 link at [here].

 

[davidrg]

If you're just going over Serial, then Kermit might be worth considering. MS-DOS Kermit on the PC10 (should fit on a floppy disk), Kermit 95 or Tera Term on the Windows 10 machine.

 

[Svenska]

I've had success running Norton Commander in DOSBox 0.74, connecting to a DOS machine through a USB-serial adapter and null-modem cable.

For serial communication, any compatible with Windows 10 (such as TeraTerm) should be able to work with any other terminal program running on DOS (such as Norton Commander's TERM90 or TERM95). ZModem transfers should work with both text and binary files. Sending many files is less convenient, though.

Kermit in its various variants is certainly a good option, I just never learned how to use it efficiently.

 

[davidrg]

Kermit in its various variants is certainly a good option, I just never learned how to use it efficiently.

Yeah, it certainly has a learning curve. I'm the maintainer of Kermit 95 and I had to look at the manual to figure out how to send the entire contents of C:\ from my Turbo XT to my Windows 11 machine in one go preserving directories, etc.

Sometime this week or next I'll try to write up some instructions and prepare some boot disk images to make this easier as I've seen it come up a few times in the last several months.

 

[davidrg]

In case its of any help, I found some time this week to write up some notes on using MS-DOS Kermit to transfer files directly to/from a modern Windows/MacOS/Linux PC using either a serial (null modem) or network cable.

In the process of writing up these notes, I copied MS-Kermit on to my Turbo XT (which also runs MS-DOS 3.3 and has only about 500K free disk space!), and then used it to recursively transfer the entire contents of its 20MB ST225 directly to my modern Windows 11 PC multiple times, along with transferring various individual files back and forth over both serial and tcp/ip. Probably the most time that machine (and certainly the green MDA screen) has had running in 25 years!