I had a quick go at it myself just to see as I've never actually used MS-DOS Kermit before - I've got a NetWare server on my LAN so all my DOS (and OS/2, and windows, and classic Mac) machines get proper network drives. For me, serial cables for file transfer are a last resort option for when something is un-networkable. I'll also note that I'm the maintainer of the Windows version of C-Kermit though I mostly use it for terminal emulation and for getting files to/from modern linux systems without having to switch to something like WinSCP.
The vintage PC:
- Celebris GL 5133ST, MS-DOS 6.22
- MS-DOS Kermit 3.14 patch level 9
The modern PC:
- Thinkpad T470, Windows 10
- C-Kermit for Windows 10.0 Beta.07/windows-04 pre-release
- USB-serial adapter
Connecting the two computers: a cat5 cable wired in a cisco-style rollover configuration with an RJ45-DE9 adapter at either end. The cat5 is a bit dodgy - its that blue solid-core stuff designed to go in walls, and I suspect the RJ45-DE9 adapters aren't great either. I had to wiggle things a bit to get a bidirectional connection. I wish I could find my good properly made null modem cable but this is all I have at hand.
On the vintage PC I ran kermit.exe, then:
Code:
set line com1
set speed 57600
server
And in C-Kermit for Windows, I ran:
Code:
set line com3
set speed 57600
set carrier-watch off
robust
send k95g.exe
The
robust
command sets kermit protocol settings to favor reliability over speed and the file went through fine. I found using
fast
instead of
robust
resulted in failed transfers - quite possibly a result of my dodgy cobbled together null modem cable. Maybe the fast mode would have worked at a slower line speed and been faster overall - probably something worth playing around with. The
set carrier-watch off
command which C-Kermit for Windows told me to run may also only be required due to my garbage null-modem cable.
With the Vintage computer running the
server
command, you can on the other computer run
set locus remote
and then browse the DOS PCs filesystem as though you were browsing your local filesystem.
set locus local
switches back to browsing your local filesystem. You can use the
send
command to send a file to the vintage PC, or the
get
command to get a file from the vintage PC. Wildcards are, of course, supported. There is also a recursive send/get option but that requires MS-DOS Kermit 3.16.
If you'd rather do everything from the vintage PC, you can instead run the
server
command inside C-Kermit for Windows. The MS-DOS version of Kermit doesn't have a
set locus
command so instead you've got to use commands like
remote dir
. This is documented in chapter 10 of the MS-DOS Kermit book.