I'm slowly piecing together a vintage homelab. Right now I have a 486 dual booting MS-DOS and OS/2 Warp 3, and a PIII running OS/2 Warp 4.

Any recommendations on good ways to get these two talking to each other, while expanding it to others in the future? Netware? Samba? Whatever IBM calls all those weird things OS/2 comes with?

I'm aware of RetroNAS and intend to look at it - although the only dedicated server I have to throw it on is FreeBSD and it looks like it's built around Debian packages for ease of installation.

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I'm slowly piecing together a vintage homelab. Right now I have a 486 dual booting MS-DOS and OS/2 Warp 3, and a PIII running OS/2 Warp 4.

Any recommendations on good ways to get these two talking to each other, while expanding it to others in the future? Netware? Samba? Whatever IBM calls all those weird things OS/2 comes with?

Hmmm you want peer networking or a centralised server? Theoretically even MS-SOD ought to have SMB available. But the simplest is probably NFS. I
don't have any experience with OS/Who thoug but SMB still seems the most likely to me.

Spec


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Hello deepthaw!

21 Nov 23 11:46, you wrote to all:

Any recommendations on good ways to get these two talking to each
other, while expanding it to others in the future? Netware? Samba? Whatever IBM calls all those weird things OS/2 comes with?

I remember back when I used OS/2 that it had a great TCP stack. I shared files just by setting up a local FTP server in one machine and accesing it from the other :)
But I know you can setup netbios and connect to windows networks.

I'm aware of RetroNAS and intend to look at it - although the only dedicated server I have to throw it on is FreeBSD and it looks like
it's built around Debian packages for ease of installation.

NO idea about the above :)

Regards
Orphan


--- GoldED+/W64-MSVC 1.1.5-b20180707
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Hello Orphan,

25 Nov 23 10:54, you wrote to deepthaw:

Hello deepthaw!

21 Nov 23 11:46, you wrote to all:

Any recommendations on good ways to get these two talking to each
other, while expanding it to others in the future? Netware?
Samba? Whatever IBM calls all those weird things OS/2 comes with?

I remember back when I used OS/2 that it had a great TCP stack. I
shared files just by setting up a local FTP server in one machine and accesing it from the other :) But I know you can setup netbios and
connect to windows networks.

yeah i'm using ftp and as it works well i was lazy to configure nfs or samba :)

Regards,
--
dp

telnet://bbs.roonsbbs.hu:1212 <<=-

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Hello Roon!

26 Nov 23 00:48, you wrote to me:

yeah i'm using ftp and as it works well i was lazy to configure nfs or samba :)

Regards,
--
dp

Yeah if you don't have to share too much using FTP is probably the easiest. Installing protocols for networking using the IBM TCP stack (don't remember exactly its name on OS/2) is a pain in the ass.

Regards
Orphan


--- GoldED+/W64-MSVC 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: Digital Asylum BBS - bbs.digitalasylum.com.ar:2323 (21:2/119)

deepthaw wrote to All <=-

I'm slowly piecing together a vintage homelab. Right now I have a 486
dual booting MS-DOS and OS/2 Warp 3, and a PIII running OS/2 Warp 4.

Any recommendations on good ways to get these two talking to each
other, while expanding it to others in the future? Netware? Samba? Whatever IBM calls all those weird things OS/2 comes with?

MS Lan Manager was the only "real" way to get OS/2 and DOS talking.
Pain in the butt. If you want to go real retro, setting up a Netware
3.11 server would definitely have all of the protocols, at a horrendous
cost of complication.

If memory serves, there was some way to connect DOS via Samba, but it's
been years since I'd even thought about that.

When I ran the two, I used Lantastic and created a DOS VDM in OS/2 to
talk to the DOS network using the DOS Lantastic stack and it worked
amazingly well. Any DOS peer-to-peer network should work similarly -
personal netware, maybe?


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Hello poindexter!

26 Nov 23 21:22, you wrote to deepthaw:

When I ran the two, I used Lantastic and created a DOS VDM in OS/2 to
talk to the DOS network using the DOS Lantastic stack and it worked
amazingly well. Any DOS peer-to-peer network should work similarly -
personal netware, maybe?

I remember I used Lantastic for a while and it worked amazingly well.. in DOS.

Regards,
Orphan


--- GoldED+/W64-MSVC 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: Digital Asylum BBS - bbs.digitalasylum.com.ar:2323 (21:2/119)

If memory serves, there was some way to connect DOS via Samba, but it's been years since I'd even thought about that.

I was under the impression the LanMan was the SMB client for DOS? No real
idea what else it did.

amazingly well. Any DOS peer-to-peer network should work similarly - personal netware, maybe?

Is Personal Netware, Netware Lite by another name? Or something else..
nwlite was the first network I had..

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
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* Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)

Orphan wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

I remember I used Lantastic for a while and it worked amazingly well..
in DOS.

Yeah, being able to do screen redirection, drive redirection, shared
drives and shared printers in DOS was pretty cool. If memory serves, the dedicated LANTastic cards only did 5 mbps, which was sufficient back
then. It let me run the BBS headless and run a console in a DOS window
is OS/2, which I thought was Pretty Damn Cool.



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Hello poindexter!

28 Nov 23 06:25, you wrote to me:

Yeah, being able to do screen redirection, drive redirection, shared drives and shared printers in DOS was pretty cool. If memory serves,
the dedicated LANTastic cards only did 5 mbps, which was sufficient
back then. It let me run the BBS headless and run a console in a DOS window is OS/2, which I thought was Pretty Damn Cool.

Yes I actually enjoyed it a lot. I don't remember the speed (specifications) but I do remember that it was plenty enough for what I did. For BBS in OS/2 its amazing.

Regards,
Orphan


--- GoldED+/W64-MSVC 1.1.5-b20180707
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Yeah, being able to do screen redirection, drive redirection, shared drives and shared printers in DOS was pretty cool. If memory serves, the dedicated LANTastic cards only did 5 mbps, which was sufficient back
then. It let me run the BBS headless and run a console in a DOS window
is OS/2, which I thought was Pretty Damn Cool.

Inneresting... I was given a copy of NWlite with the first 3c503 cards I received. At the time I was able to just bung them in, run the install
software off its floppy and it all worked like a dream. At least remote
drives and print sharing did. Had to use Artisoft's "The Network Eye" for screen redirection.

A few people tried to sling me a copy of LanTastic further down the track. I don't know if these were dud copies, or what, but they steadfastly refused to install at any time. It always appeared to be missing drivers... but being
pre internet if it didn't work out of the box, then it was pretty tricky
trying to get anything else required. And I don't think I ever saw what a complete driver load for an installed system looked like.

Out of interest, what kind of card only did 5mbps? Never saw anything like that.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
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* Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)

Orphan wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Yes I actually enjoyed it a lot. I don't remember the speed (specifications) but I do remember that it was plenty enough for what I did. For BBS in OS/2 its amazing.

The cards were some sort of proprietary protocol that ran over coax with terminators, like ethernet. Where Ethernet was 10mbps, LANtastic was
something like 2 mbps, which was sufficient for DOS networking, printer
sharing and so on.

Fast forward 30 years and I've got gigabit networking in my house...



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Spectre wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Out of interest, what kind of card only did 5mbps? Never saw anything
like that.

They were proprietary, not Ethernet. I'm pretty sure ARCnet was 5 mbps,
which ended up performing as well if not better than Ethernet since it
didn't have issues with collisions. ARCnet was a token-passing algorithm
like Token Ring.



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Hello poindexter!

01 Dec 23 08:03, you wrote to me:

The cards were some sort of proprietary protocol that ran over coax
with terminators, like ethernet. Where Ethernet was 10mbps, LANtastic
was something like 2 mbps, which was sufficient for DOS networking, printer sharing and so on.

Yes I remember that. I did not have numbers in my head of how fast it was, but comparing to nowadays its amazing how things have changed.

Fast forward 30 years and I've got gigabit networking in my house...

Yeah me too.. which is amazing

Regards
Orphan


--- GoldED+/W64-MSVC 1.1.5-b20180707
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They were proprietary, not Ethernet. I'm pretty sure ARCnet was 5 mbps, which ended up performing as well if not better than Ethernet since it didn't have issues with collisions. ARCnet was a token-passing algorithm like Token Ring.

Hehe, horses for courses... Ethernet without significant load ought to be faster than Token Ring. Of course as soon as you load it up, and CD and resolution were a bit more ordinary.. Only ever saw the odd ARCnet card.. and by the TokenRing cards were popping up, thin ethernet was already in use.. There's also meant to be an 8Mbp TokenRing too If'n I recall right..

I can only guess it must've been a pretty early version of LanTastic, I've
only got memories of the oddbod using it was NE1/2000's

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)

On 01 Dec 2023 at 08:05a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

They were proprietary, not Ethernet. I'm pretty sure ARCnet was 5 mbps, which ended up performing as well if not better than Ethernet since it didn't have issues with collisions. ARCnet was a token-passing algorithm like Token Ring.

I believe ARCnet was 2.5 Mbps, but it was token-based and I will
absolutely buy that it beat early Ethernet.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
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On 05 Dec 2023 at 06:20a, Spectre pondered and said...

They were proprietary, not Ethernet. I'm pretty sure ARCnet was 5 mbp which ended up performing as well if not better than Ethernet since i didn't have issues with collisions. ARCnet was a token-passing algori like Token Ring.

Hehe, horses for courses... Ethernet without significant load ought to be faster than Token Ring. Of course as soon as you load it up, and CD and resolution were a bit more ordinary.. Only ever saw the odd ARCnet
card.. and by the TokenRing cards were popping up, thin ethernet was already in use.. There's also meant to be an 8Mbp TokenRing too If'n I recall right..

Depends on the TokenRing. TR was at 16 Mbps when Ethernet
was still capped at 10 Mbps, and of course, it would scale
better as the number of stations on the network increased.
(Linear versus quadratic.) By the time of Fast (100 Mbps)
switched Ethernet, though, TokenRing was obsolete. But aside
from the frame format, ethernet today bears little resemblance
to the original Ethernet developed at PARC (which was actually
3 Mbps....).

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
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Spectre wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Hehe, horses for courses... Ethernet without significant load ought to
be faster than Token Ring. Of course as soon as you load it up, and CD
and resolution were a bit more ordinary..

A different world... at one company we had 20-30 users on shared
ethernet hubs, then used a 5 port switch as a collapsed backbone - that
way you could share files/printers in your group and not be affected by
traffic elsewhere.

We had to do a lot of balancing to make it work, but it was worlds
better than the coax ethernet it replaced.

Only ever saw the odd ARCnet
card.. and by the TokenRing cards were popping up, thin ethernet was already in use.. There's also meant to be an 8Mbp TokenRing too If'n I recall right..

Any time you needed a small workgroup back in the early '90s, people
recommended ARCnet - maybe because it was robust and (mostly)
trouble-free. You'd need to set a card ID on jumpers, so it needed some
documentation to prevent duplicate IDs when you added more systems, but
you could set up a star topology with a passive hub over coax easily.


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tenser wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

I believe ARCnet was 2.5 Mbps, but it was token-based and I will absolutely buy that it beat early Ethernet.

Back then, the clod who managed our company's networks put all of the IT desktops into the same segment as the servers. We'd get horrible
performance during the day, then make the servers unavailable when we
played Quake after hours.

I don't use the term "clod" lightly. He insisted on Cat 5 jacks and
premise cabling, then terminated them on 66 blocks and cross-connected
every jack using 2 pair cross-connect cable to a set up 66 blocks that connected via AMP cable to the switch. The 66 blocks were only CAT3, the cross-connect cables were *lucky* if they supported CAT3.



... Adding on
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On 05 Dec 2023 at 06:28a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

tenser wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

I believe ARCnet was 2.5 Mbps, but it was token-based and I will absolutely buy that it beat early Ethernet.

Back then, the clod who managed our company's networks put all of the IT desktops into the same segment as the servers. We'd get horrible performance during the day, then make the servers unavailable when we played Quake after hours.

I don't use the term "clod" lightly. He insisted on Cat 5 jacks and premise cabling, then terminated them on 66 blocks and cross-connected every jack using 2 pair cross-connect cable to a set up 66 blocks that connected via AMP cable to the switch. The 66 blocks were only CAT3, the cross-connect cables were *lucky* if they supported CAT3.

LOL. "Unclear on the concept" right there.

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On 05 Dec 23 13:08:24 tenser wrote...

On 01 Dec 2023 at 08:05a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

They were proprietary, not Ethernet. I'm pretty sure ARCnet was
5 mbps, which ended up performing as well if not better than
Ethernet since it didn't have issues with collisions. ARCnet was
a token-passing algorithm like Token Ring.

I believe ARCnet was 2.5 Mbps, but it was token-based and I will
absolutely buy that it beat early Ethernet.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64) * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin,
New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

To which Bf2K+ replies...

The first two Netware networks that I ever set up wer on ARCnet systems.
They worked very well but I don't remember ethernet being available at
that time... of course these days I don't remember much of anything :)


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