EtherDFS – The Ethernet DOS File System

>MS-Net is another option for connecting DOS boxes to linux servers running samba - it's a neat way of running diskless DOS boxes.

Actually it seems to me like a non-option or a non-available option (unless one finds the program and license on some garage sale or the like).

Retro computing is a bit of a hobby for some of us. I'll find the program very useful personally.

From the page: 'For years, I was using LapLink to transfer files between my various "retro" computers.'

until 4-5 years back, my wife's lab still owned some old scientific equipment whose control software ran on DOS. they'd dumped another piece of equipment a few years before that which ran an embedded DOS system, and booted/ran off of a 1.44MB floppy. (not a good design decision for long lasting hardware.)

both pieces of hardware were sold to folks who intended to use them.

DOSBox really does suck in some specific use cases and thus a native MS/PC-DOS is needed.

Before 10 years ago it was used heavily in PC hardware development and testing. Basically DOS as a bootloader that gives you full access to the computer hardware. Windows had too many things going on in the background to give that control plus the driver development is not so easy. These days Linux seems the answer since you have the source code and can trim it down to the minimal needed for control. I'd have killed for a networking file system for DOS back then. I think we ended up using something like a lap link protocol to transfer files from my development system to the test systems.

DOS (without or with older hardware) is great for hardware hacking, e.g. it's trivial to write code to directly access hardware and find out how it works; the information can then be used to e.g. implement a linux driver. Note that performance is also very good as well, e.g. for bit-banged I/O just disable interrupts for minimal latency and maximum throughput.

Also for simple network-attached embedded devices that have to be ultra-reliable, there isn't much to go wrong.

Sidenote:

If anyone wants to make a new-school 64 bit DOS-alike, that would be really kool. thx.