DOS PC with ETHERNET

I know, I'm asking a lot lately, but hell, I have a lot of projects and works at once..., not a lot of time to learn and search...

The question is,

I have a PC running a DOS application. It's booting from HDD, but it's a bootdisk-DOS from Windows 98SE that is installed on the hard disk.

So, the PC boots, it looks in AUTOEXEC.BAT and boots the application SCROLLS_ . This application controls a machine.

On this PC, we install patterns, patterns that the designroom creates and copy on a floppy disk. We then copy the patterns from the floppy on the hard disk of the PC and load from in the application the needed pattern...

This is old fashion...

What the managers want is:

Connecting the PC on the OFFICE NETWORK.

Problem is... we run DOS.

Is there a DOS with ETHERNET POSSIBILLITIES, CAN I SET THE IP ADRES THEN ALSO ?

OR, IS THERE SOMETHING THAT I CAN INSTALL AND MAKE IT BOOT ALSO... LIKE... BOOTING DOS, then in the autoexec TCP/IP settings are loaded, then the application...

I'm just trying to explain how I see it...

The main thing is that we need the possibillity to place files in the PATTERNS directory of this PC running in DOS.


Extra question That I'm asking myself then, if we can do that, is it then possible to navigate from a windows-PC to the PATTERNS directory of the DOS-PC over the OFFICE NETWORK ?

I'm not an IT engineer, and our IT people are a bit lazy

You could try running the DOS application on a virtual PC - VMWare for instance...if it works you could replace the existing DOS PC with a standard windows workstation and have full network access....

..

krk said:

You could try running the DOS application on a virtual PC - VMWare for instance...if it works you could replace the existing DOS PC with a standard windows workstation and have full network access....

Click to expand...

I'm talking about pentiums, pentium 133 Mhz with 32 ram or something...

So Install Windows 98 on it would be your advice ?

Yes, this can be done. We used to do this with regularity, booting to DOS and logging on to the network with new computers that came in the door, to load a ghost image from the network.


You will have to find a DOS driver for your ethernet card (most have at their website). Load the driver in DOS and then use NETLOGON to get on the network. I may have one of these old discs laying around, but that's all the specifics I remember now.

When I built computers I always networked them to do the OS and other software installs. There are numerous books out that will provide step by step instructions, check out a local bookstore.

http://members.tripod.com/~bbright/information/dosnetwork.htm

http://www.duxcw.com/dcforum/DCForumID2/91.html

http://www.dendarii.co.uk/FAQs/dos-net.html