Subj : Re: Freedos and Windows 3.x
To   : J0hnny A1pha
From : AKAcastor
Date : Wed Feb 28 2024 13:33:26

 ja> Yes, running ArcaOS v5.1 on a Thinkpad T43 that I picked up for $40 on
 ja> eBay, and it installed easier than when I tried on more modern hardware
 ja> (had to use DFSee to deal with partitions on a modern PC). Wireless
 ja> doesn't work, but that's OK, it's not actually portable anyway.

Any idea what is optimal hardware for ArcaOS?  A while back I bought a license and ran it for a while on a system here, but I didn't really explore its capabilities.  I am curious how beefy of an OS/2 system can be built, and how many nodes of a BBS could be run (obviously there's a lot of factors involved).

 ja> I'm digging PCBoard running on the Thinkpad (other than the
 ja> constant noise, lol), and ArcaOS supports SMB and VNC, so it's easy to
 ja> access file shares and do remote admin stuff. 

With SMB and VNC that seems convenient.  Is there an SSH server for OS/2?

 ja> So far I've got the 4 DOS experiments:

 ja> 1) ProxMox (hit a wall with NDIS2 driver tho and DHCP tho)
 ja> 2) Dosbian (TBD - high hopes!!)
 ja> 3) ArcaOS (working with OS/2 native BBS packages, real hardware)
 ja> 4) Physical DOS machine (I'm cobbling together with an RTL8139 and VGA)

Looks like Dosbian is based on DOSBox, so I think that seems promising - I have had pretty good luck with DOSBox-X, though I am still working out some issues.  (clock skew, and MSCLIENT needing to be disconnected and reconnected - but I am not sure the MSCLIENT issue is related to DOSBox, it happens in 86Box also.)

I looked a bit at 86Box, it could be a promising option I think, right now it doesn't have telnet softmodem built in, but that could be worked around (or added to 86Box).  I haven't used 86Box enough to know if there are other issues that would pop up.

 ja> I *really* like physical machines, but that PC a mini-tower and just can't
 ja> see myself building multiple machines for this!

I agree with the love for physical machines, and also agree it's just so hard to run enough machines to meet our ambitions.  It really is convenient to be able to use VNC and other tools for remote management also.

 ja> Hoping I can crack ProMox or Dosbian with RINGDOWN on the front-end :)

The telnet ringdown server definitely needs to be put through its paces!


Chris/akacastor

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