Accessing a DOS computer via a network

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 29 August 2016 17:49:23 Karl Auer wrote:

> On Mon, 2016-08-29 at 08:42 -0700, John R. Sowden wrote:
> > I am not sure is this is sarcasm or reality.
>
> Not sarcasm, I am genuinely fascinated at the idea. What is your
> business? What is the software that runs it? If you can share.
>
> > I use the computers for a 24 hour per day business.
>
> I would say, though, that you have built up a big tech debt there, and
> really should be thinking hard about how to protect that business from
> the inevitable failure of the hardware it's running on. One way might
> be virtualisation. Definitely make sure you have images of all the
> software install disks, because you won't be able to replace them.
>
> >   I have been using this network since about 
> > 1986.  The network OS is called Little Big Lan
>
> I remember LBL :-)
>
> > office on a non-networked computer.  I am going to try to find a
> > card newer card with BNC and RJ-45, but I am concerned about the
> > setup.
>
> Those sorts of cards are (almost) certainly not available new; they
> are the sort of thing you'll find in people's bits boxes.
>
> Good luck :-)
>
> Regards, K.

Another thought Karl, and TBT I have not looked, but how about a usb 
dongle of some sort that is one of those old simplex bnc ports, at 10 
megabits of course.  We have all sorts of std ethernet gizmo's that plug 
into a usb port.  Why not one with the BNC on it?

OTOH, your remark about a technical debt the O.P. has not paid is very 
very real.  Todays RJ-45 hookups are not 10 megabit, simplex, but 10 
gigabit, a huge speedup, and they are full duplex too.

You and I have paid that piper, sometimes quite well I expect but 
computers have become more reliable to the point that they are 
appliances now.

Modern computers can die, and if you have backups, a new machine can be 
plugged into the existing cable, and be doing the failed machines job in 
4 to 6 hours if you have to do a bare metal install on the new computers 
empty hard drive.

"offlease" machines can often be had for under a hundred dollar bill that 
are 20x faster than what the O.P. is using now, and in any business, 
that saved time cannot help but be a huge plus item on the P&L report.

I just picked up an older dual core P4 dell to run one of my CNC machines 
with, 2 gigs of dram, gigabit ethernet ports(2), $75 w/o a hard drive, 
and I have a 32gig SS drive to put into it, and install LinuxCNC on.

I expect I'd better get to that project since I am waiting on other parts 
for this lathes conversion to lights out manufacturing.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
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