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INTERLNK/INTERSVR running under DOS 3.3!

K

Ken Vaughn

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Jan 16, 2010
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138
Location
Colorado, USA
I have an external cabinet with a hard disk (Rodime 33MB) attached to one of my IBM 5150's. I have been wanting to transfer a large quantity of older DOS programs/data from a 486DX2 system (running DOS 6.22) back to the IBM PC which is running under DOS 3.3. I had previously backed up the entire 486DX2 hard drive to a laptop (running Win98SE) using INTERLNK/INTERSVR so I tried an experiment.

I copied INTERSVR.EXE from the DOS 6.22 machine to a 5.25" floppy and loaded in on my 5150. Using a parallel file transfer cable I hooked up my laptop's printer port to the printer port on the IBM 5150. I booted my Win98SE laptop to DOS. I then brought up INTERSVR on the 5150 and INTERLNK on the laptop. Since the 5150 is a FAT16 machine, it has to be the server and the laptop (FAT32 machine) must be the client. I learned this when I backed up my 486DX2 running DOS 6.22.

I wasn't very optimistic about INTERSVR running under DOS 3.3, but IT DID! I used XCOPY on the laptop to copy several directories containing sub-directories and large numbers of files. I did not try to copy any long filenames -- all the files on the laptop that I wanted were DOS "8.3" filenames.

I thought this info might be of use to others.
 
I don't understand your surprise. Interlink uses the DOS redirector hooks just like MSCDEX does; It really shouldn't know or care about what filesystem is present. And long filenames aren't supported in DOS real mode even under Win98SE without some sort of third-party add-on, such as DOSLFN.
 
I'm not sure if every file automatically has an 8.3 alias but in newer dos/cmd prompts you can view it doing "dir /x" if you're trying to figure out what the 8.x name would be. Directories with spaces I think it will end up taking the first 8 characters with the space which you would have to access that directory using quotes (cd "test dir") if it works, but it's been a long time since I've used that and I was never fond of non 8.3 naming standards so most of my stuff followed that formatting for quite some time.

Does bring back lots of not that painful but long day memories backing up my systems that way and my poor mans network. lol later I even shared our dial-up internet off my 98 system with ICS once I could afford some "real" networking gear.
 
Chuck(G) said:
I don't understand your surprise. Interlink uses the DOS redirector hooks just like MSCDEX does; It really shouldn't know or care about what filesystem is present. And long filenames aren't supported in DOS real mode even under Win98SE without some sort of third-party add-on, such as DOSLFN.
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Yes, but since INTERLNK didn't appear until DOS 6.0 (or was it a later version of 5.x) I thought there might be some system dependencies that would bite me. Wouldn't be the first time.

I searched the VCF archives and GOOGLED this before trying it -- couldn't find much.
 
Ken Vaughn said:
Yes, but since INTERLNK didn't appear until DOS 6.0 (or was it a later version of 5.x) I thought there might be some system dependencies that would bite me. Wouldn't be the first time.
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Well, the network redirector has been around for donkey's years. Just curious--have you tried reversing the roles of the server/link systems? I wonder if you might find some dependencies that way.
 
MikeS said:
Zipping 'em up can save a lot of time (and preserve long names if the receiving system can use 'em).
Click to expand...

Long file name support was never an issue. These files had been saved and copied through 286 and 386 systems onto a 486DX2 system. I just wanted to restore some of them back to the PC 5150 where they originally came from.

Many of the files would never fit on a floppy even if zipped. And breaking up large files and then putting them back together is a pain. My IBM 5150s have no networking hardware -- the INTERLNK solution works very well, even if it is slow. You have to go get another coffee and visit the bathroom from time to time anyway.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Well, the network redirector has been around for donkey's years. Just curious--have you tried reversing the roles of the server/link systems? I wonder if you might find some dependencies that way.
Click to expand...

Yes, I tried putting the server on the FAT32 system when I backed up the files originally. It did not work. I found several articles on the internet which warned about this. It is just the opposite of what you would think. I suspect that if you link FAT16 to FAT16 systems there would be no problem, but linking a FAT16 client to a FAT32 server doesn't work.
 
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Ken Vaughn said:
Long file name support was never an issue. These files had been saved and copied through 286 and 386 systems onto a 486DX2 system. I just wanted to restore some of them back to the PC 5150 where they originally came from.
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Well, I did say "if the receiving system can use 'em"; obviously that doesn't include your DOS 3.3 PC. I was just pointing out that it's a way of retaining LFNs between LFN-capable systems when using a non-aware program like Interlink.

Many of the files would never fit on a floppy even if zipped. And breaking up large files and then putting them back together is a pain. My IBM 5150s have no networking hardware -- the INTERLNK solution works very well, even if it is slow. You have to go get another coffee and visit the bathroom from time to time anyway.
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I wasn't talking about floppies, but since you were complaining about the speed I thought I'd point out that you can usually speed up transferring files if you ZIP them up first.
 
MikeS said:
I wasn't talking about floppies, but since you were complaining about the speed I thought I'd point out that you can usually speed up transferring files if you ZIP them up first.
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OK I understand your recommendation now. But if INTERLINK didn't work floppies would have been my only choice, unless I installed a networking card and software. The 486DX2 system is upstairs, and the IBM 5150's are in the basement. The laptop provides a very convenient transfer mechanism, especially since I had already copied all the files I wanted to the laptop. The point of my post was to report on something that worked -- actually I was satisfied with the transfer speeds, and using XCOPY commands to copy directories containing sub-directories and large numbers of files works very nicely.
 
Interlink is certainly useful; whenever the topic of transferring files between old computers comes up as it does here regularly I make a point of mentioning it if no one else does. It's free, you don't need compatible drives, it can install itself remotely if necessary and it works across pretty well all versions of DOS (including LFN-aware 7+ and FAT32 with some restrictions as you noted, contrary to some suggestions on the 'net that it's not possible); I have some laptops too old to have USB or built-in Ethernet and without internal floppy drives, and it's the only way of getting data in/out without buying something. For the few cases where Interlink doesn't work there are more capable alternatives like FastLynx for example.

And you can use the same cable for a Windows<>Windows DCC connection ;-)

XCOPY works of course, but as someone who transfers 60+MB daily from a DOS6.22 to a W98 system I sure appreciate that ZIPping not only offers many more options but also lets me transfer in 1/6 the time.
 
MikeS said:
XCOPY works of course, but as someone who transfers 60+MB daily from a DOS6.22 to a W98 system I sure appreciate that ZIPping not only offers many more options but also lets me transfer in 1/6 the time.
Click to expand...

Good grief -- 60Mb daily! I'm sure you have a good reason. I transferred less than 20MB and that was one time only.
 
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