Need a DOS Box with the ability to connect to a network!

[amphibious]

Back in the late 80s/early 90s I made a lot of ANSI based graphics, and I'd love to get back to doing it. I've played around with various contemporary solutions and haven't been satisfied with the results.

I am primarily a Mac user and I've tried out both VMWare and Parallels and haven't had great success getting DOS to run. Also, getting a Windows laptop won't really work because I need to be working at 640x480 and LCD resizing is hideous.

I'd much rather prefer to get some sort of low-powered computer that I can install DOS on and attach an LCD that runs at 640x480, or a CRT if I can find a good one. I'd prefer something new so I don't have to worry about 10-15 year old hardware crapping out on me. Extra small form factor would be great, and I don't need much hard drive space (less than 50mb would be fine) since my purposes are so limited.

So, the issue is getting that information off the low-powered DOS computer. I'd like to attach it to my network (wireless preferably, but wired is fine), but even something like being able to copy it over to a USB flash drive would be OK too. FTP/HTTP abilities would be appreciated as well.

What sort of DOS should I be looking at? Is there anything that's in current development or do I need to go back to MS-DOS or PC-DOS?

Can anyone point me in a good direction to find something like this?

Any monitors I should check out?

 

[mpilchfamily]

Dos really wasn't designed with networking in mind. You would need to build your own DOS based software to work with a network adapter. Best option may be digging up an old copy of Windows 95.

As for monitor any will CRT will do. Problem is finding one that works.

Another problem you may run into is getting DOS/Win 95 to recognize an SATA HDD.

 

[Zap]

mpilchfamily is onto something with Windows 95, though I would recommend Windows 98SE. That is the most recent version of Windows that still allows easy access to booting directly into DOS, plus it has drivers built-in for the common 10/100 Realtek cards. Just boot into DOS for doing your ANSI work, and then type "win" to start Windows to transfer stuff over the network.

If you are anywhere near the 53144 area code, I can give you a working 17" CRT monitor for free (just come pick it up). It is an old Gateway and isn't fancy and doesn't have a flat CRT... oh yeah, and missing the base. BUT it works, and works well. Last I tried it, the picture was sharp and clear.

 

[IlllI]

look on ebay for a toshiba libretto. its small, has 640x480 lcd screen and win 95. yeah its old but you can get one pretty cheap. not sure about network stuff though

 

[mbeleni]

Probably Win98SE is the way to go, it supports USB at the least which'll make your life much easier especially when it comes to networking options.

DOS had almost nothing in that regard, it was usually hand-coded by each individual party to allow for a specific program to work... and so you could only connect to someone else running the same program, usually. There was just nothing in the way of standardization until Windows 95, but Win98SE will do everything it can, and so much more. It's the ideal old-school platform since you can get virtually anything DOS to work, even ancient programs with very fussy requirements for hardware which doesn't exist anymore.

You should try out DOSBox some more though, work with the .conf file to tailor it to meet your needs. They've even successfully got protected mode DOS games working on the latest patches, which is a stroke of genius in itself. They've got it to a state where it honestly is almost as good as the original, a few more patches and we won't need to scrounge up obsolete hardware to play our obsolete software.