Am 07.08.2010 03:22, schrieb Someone: > Command line linux is much easier to network than freedos and there is a > lot of utility to it.
You are right. There is no doubt that GNU/Linux is much better equipped for networking than (Free)DOS. GNU/Linux also runs on old hardware, although it can be difficult (and painfully slow) to install. Modern installers need a lot of resources. I run Debian (Dual boot with FreeDOS) on some 486SX with 20 MB RAM so I know something about that. > Companies aren't releasing dos drivers This is not necessarily true. Two weeks ago we had a discussion about drivers for the RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller in a quite modern Acer Aspire One netbook. As we found out, Realtek still released ODI (Netware) and NDIS (MS Client for DOS) drivers for that NIC, so it can be used with shims as packet drivers for networking in FreeDOS. So even when some companies do not release packet drivers for DOS, the NIC might be still usable. > I question whether TCP/IP is the best way to go in a DOS environment. You are right. Security is an issue. ftpsrv32.exe for instance - one of the few FTP servers that exist for DOS - doesn't ask for a password and opens the whole DOS system for guests. And if you are using WLAN in DOS, you are limited to 802.11b cards with WEP encryption, which is insecure per definition. On the other hand, most TCP/IP networking software in DOS cannot run as TSR. It runs fullscreen in the foreground, which is hard to ignore. So there are no ports unintentionally open. And if you are running a server in DOS you are at least not running anything else. ;-) > For security reasons, most of us probably don't want > our DOS environments to connect directly to the Net, but for > gaming purposes, local area networking can be quite fun. Gaming is one possible purpose of networking DOS machines. Another reason may be the need to run old DOS software that has to have network access. But I think the most important reason people have to network (Free)DOS is simply to be able to exchange data. Modern computers don't have floppies, parallel or serial ports. Old computers don't have USB or SD-cards. Some old computers have CD-Rom but burning CDs for data exchange can be annoying, as Mike Eriksen pointed out. TCP/IP for DOS has been around since the eighties, so it is the common ground for old and new hardware, for DOS and a more modern OS. Just as example: How do I myself exchange data between FreeDOS on my old 486SX laptops and my modern Thinkpad running Ubuntu Lucid? By starting a ftp server in freedos and logging in with filezilla. How else could I do this? By loading MS Client and creating a shared directory. > How about DOSbox, Virtualbox, and VMWARE nics? Can Freedos use any > virtual NICS? I installed FreeDOS in Virtualbox last week. Virtualbox uses a AMD PCnet-Fast III card. A free packet driver "pcntpk.com" for this card is available at: <http://www.crynwr.com/drivers/amdpd.zip> For MS Client you can get the NDIS driver "pcntnd.dos" at: <ftp://ftp.dlink.com/NIC/de520/Driver/uncompressed/MSLANMAN.DOS/DRIVERS/ETHERNET/PCNTND/> In Virtualbox the only way to exchange data between the FreeDOS guest and the host (Ubuntu in my case) is to create a network: I use the vbox network adapter in bridged mode. In the FreeDOS guest I run a DOS server in my LAN (behind a router of course) and connect to it from the Ubuntu host with filezilla. I also connected the FreeDOS guest with a scond Virtualbox guest running Windows XP via MS Client in DOS. So yes, you are right: TCP/IP and DOS are probably not the best combination. And no, you are not right: Networking DOS via TCP/IP is still needed for many reasons. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net email is sponsored by Make an app they can't live without Enter the BlackBerry Developer Challenge http://p.sf.net/sfu/RIM-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
