I have to admit that, until sometime in 1999, I thought one needed a Windows or Unix or Linux system to connect with the Internet.
I knew that most of the early Internet software was first written for Unix. What I didn't realize at the time was that much of this software got "ported" to or rewritten for DOS. I now understand that Winsock was developed only after this had been going on for a few years. Of course, once Winsock(s) started working well, much of that porting from Unix was redirected from DOS to Windows.
Most DOS Internet software uses a Packet Driver. This may consist of an Ethernet adapter card's device driver. Or, it may be software emulating an Ethernet device driver while performing the PPP protocol through a serial port or modem. PPP is now universally used for dial-up Internet access. Connecting with the Internet from a DOS system is definitely a practical option that has been available for over fourteen years.
The DOS Packet Driver interface is much lower level than the Windows Winsock
interface. So, each DOS Internet application needs to make its own
arrangements for a "stack" of TCP/IP protocol software. Many of the
commercial suites of DOS networking applications made this arrangement by
installing their proprietary protocol stack into DOS as a device driver or
TSR. Other DOS internet applications simply incorporate a protocol stack
within their own code. Many of these applications incorporate the WATTCP
software stack developed and published in source form by Erick Engelke.
Erick's software was working pretty well by 1993.
Investigate Erick's latest offerings.
(Erick's site seems to have gone dark sometime in the first half of 2007.)
My six DOS Internet Software offerings all run on lowest common denominator 8088 based (and all later) IBM compatible PCs. Four of them are applications that use a built-in WATTCP stack. The fifth is an update of Russell Nelson's PLIP Packet Driver for parallel ports. The sixth is a small TSR needed to avoid a problem that occurs when INTERLNK is used in a PC which also uses PLIP.
They require no extra software beyond DOS v3.x or later, a basic Packet Driver or Packet Driver emulator, and perhaps some batch file "glue". That makes it easy to mix one's use of these applications with use of other applications that also incorporate a built-in protocol stack.
"DosLynx is a World-Wide Web browser for users of MS-DOS platforms. DosLynx includes it's TCP/IP stack and is able to access the Internet either directly via an Ethernet or TokenRing, or indirectly via a dial-in SLIP or PPP connection."
"DosLynx is a product of the Distributed Computing Group within Academic Computing Services of The University of Kansas. DosLynx was originally implemented by Garrett Blythe."
"DosLynx is copyrighted by the University of Kansas and is free for non-commercial use. Commercial use will be licensed at a later date."
"DosLynx is no longer in development at the University of Kansas.
Wayne Buttles
of fdisk.com is currently providing some development and
support. Please see
http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/
for more information about his work."
From the
University of Kansas About DosLynx Web site.
(The quoted Web page was last seen, from KU, early in 2005.)
Here is a mirror
copy, of the quoted Web page, from January 2000.
I started working with Wayne's last release of DosLynx (DosLynx v0.16a) almost seven years ago. Support for nine more characters, beyond those included in ISO-8859-1, and limited support for UTF-8 document encoding are the featured enhancements in my latest release. DosLynx version 0.35b also brings support for the various HTTP and HTML (anti)caching directives. A new histmode= configuration item is provided in connection with the support for (anti)caching directives. A new section in DOSLYNX.CFG describes this.
The DosLynx 16 bit Protected Mode version is now in its sixth release. If your system can be equipped with a DOS Protected Mode Interface (or, DPMI) service, you will be able to run either version of DosLynx. The DosLynx Protected Mode version has about nine times as much memory, as the Real Mode version, to work with. (Over 2.3 MB versus about 250 KB.) This extra memory virtually eliminates the inability to completely present some very large documents, still present in the Real Mode version. My document: DPMIREVU.HTM reports on DPMI services that have been tested with the DosLynx Protected Mode version.
As usual, there are other improvements and bug fixes that make for ever
stronger running version(s) of DosLynx. This is not your same old DosLynx.
My latest release is designated:
DosLynx v0.35b.
Visit my DosLynx Quick Start Home Page for more about
DosLynx v0.35b.
See a Turbo Vision enthusiast's account of the origins of DosLynx.
Download the last release of DosLynx (DosLynx v0.16a, September 1996) available from Wayne Buttles.
Download my first release
of DosLynx (DosLynx v0.20b, June 2002), in a package with some extra
batch file glue and utilities, available from
John Lewis VE3LGS.
If DosLynx is new to you, you may find that John's package simplifies
installing it. Once you have DosLynx installed and working, it will be
easy to update your installation's files with those from the latest
release.
Download my previous release of the DosLynx Real Mode version package (DosLynx v0.34b, June 2007).
Download my fifth release of the DosLynx Protected Mode add-on (DosLynx v0.34b, June 2007).
Download the
DosLynx versions 0.2xb Documentation Package.
This package contains a complete set of
DosLynx Quick Start Home Page (or, info.htm) and
history.txt documents from all eight of the DosLynx v0.2xb releases.
It replaces this site's former dlx2x sub-directories. This package is for
those who want to know all there is to know about the DosLynx v0.2xb
releases. Including the .ZIP file, the package's installation will require
approximately 785 KB of disk space.
Use PKUNZIP's -d option to install the package into an empty directory.
Then, start browsing with the INFO2X.HTM document that gets installed in your
empty directory. It provides a table of contents for, and links to, the rest
of the documents.
PMSMTP is a "Mail Transfer Agent" for Pegasus Mail that I started from a copy of the TDOSLY15.CPP module of DosLynx. I developed PMSMTP when I decided to switch to an ISP that required SMTP AUTH LOGIN authentication for relaying my mail.
PMPOP, the "official" Internet Mail Transfer Agent for releases of Pegasus Mail for DOS, comes in two versions. The version for Packet Driver based installations, PDPMPOP, doesn't seem to support the SMTP AUTH LOGIN extension. By providing this missing support, PMSMTP complements PMPOP's capabilities and widens the group of SMTP servers usable with Pegasus Mail.
PMSMTP version 0.14b upgrades PMSMTP version 0.12b, after a successful four and a half year run. Featured in this update are all the WATTCP improvements that have been developed for DosLynx in that time. In particular, these improvements include the addition of modern DHCP support. PMSMTP version 0.14b also adds configuration for SMTP servers that listen on a TCP/IP port number other than the traditional well known port 25. It eliminates problem(s) with mail text lines that begin with a period. And, it provides a possibly improved transmission progress indication for very long mails.
Read more about PMSMTP v0.14b and SMTP AUTH LOGIN in my updated PMSMTP.TXT document. This document now includes a History section providing more information about the changes mentioned above.
Download my old PMSMTP package (version 0.12b, July 2002).
Download PMSMT12X
(version 0.12x, September 2006).
In the fall of 2006, ISPs in Europe and the Middle East were reported
changing their SMTP servers to listen, for e-mail submission(s), on TCP/IP
port 587. Instead of the well known port 25.
PMSMT12X.EXE is merely a copy of PMSMTP.EXE v0.12b, with a patch for
the port number it contacts. It briefly provided for sending e-mail via
those changed servers. However you probably won't need it, now that my
PMSMTP v0.14b package is available.
Download my latest
PMSMTP package (version 0.14b, January 2007).
This package provides a complete replacement and upgrade for the old ones.
However, if you are already using PMSMTP v0.12b, you'll probably want
to avoid replacing your established PMSMTP.CFG file with the updated, but
untailored, new one.
"SSHDOS is an open source SSH client for DOS [published by Nagy Daniel]. It is based on the WATTCP library, PuTTY SSH client, the UNIX SSH package and the CVT100 package. This release supports VT100 terminal emulation, 3DES and BlowFish ciphers. It's enough to read your mails with Pine . . ."
"SSH is a telnet like remote access protocol, but provides encrypted
channels, so others cannot tamper with your session. To run SSHDOS, you
need a plain DOS environment, a Packet Driver [or, Packet Driver emulator],
server side SSH support, and an alive network connection."
From the Web site of Nagy Daniel. Copyright (c) 2000 Nagy Daniel
The present-day "Official SSHDOS homepage".
I became aware of SSHDOS in December 2000 just after Nagy had released SSHDOS v0.6. It needed one small change to work with the SSH server I wanted to be able to contact at that time. It had to be able to overlook my server's negative response to the SSH_CMSG_MAX_PACKET_SIZE "preparatory" message that SSHDOS sends.
Nagy showed me a way to accomplish this change within a day or two of my e-mail to him about it. Shortly after that, I decided to make my own SSHDOS, incorporating that change. I also changed compiler options in the makefile to make an .EXE that will run on an 8086/8088 or above (rather than a '286 or above). I called my make of SSHDOS: SSHDOS v0.67m. My success with this little project really hooked me on working on DOS Internet software!
As Nagy has since released SSHDOS versions 0.7, 0.8, and 0.9x, my version 0.67m is somewhat out-of-date. I haven't tried to make a newer version because I haven't had an SSH server available for testing lately.
Download my make of SSHDOS (SSHDOS v0.67m, January 2001), for lowest common denominator PCs.
Download the SSHDOS v0.95 sources from Nagy Daniel's SourceForge site.
None of the machines on my home LAN are set-up to use Wake On Lan or AMD's Magic Packet Technology (PDF). But, when Martin Webb mentioned it to me, I was intrigued. The hook set when I discovered that Ken Yap wrote a Perl script for sending the AMD Magic Packet about five years ago. I also found some small Linux and Windows programs for doing that. (The Windows reference mentions DOS. But, it offers a program using Winsock. I think he must have a Windows DOS window in mind.)
However, I wasn't able to find a DOS Packet Driver based program for sending
the AMD Magic Packet. So, I thought I'd see what I could do about that.
After a false start, the result is my DosWOL program or command.
Read all about
DosWOL.
Download my DosWOL package (version 0.11, December 2004).
PLIP is a Packet Driver for parallel (printer) ports published, with assembler source, by Russell Nelson in 1992. A pair of interconnected parallel ports, driven with PLIP, can provide the same kinds of connectivity that a pair of interconnected ethernet cards, driven with their matching Packet Driver(s), can provide. Interconnected parallel ports provide transfer throughputs in between those of traditional serial ports and those of ethernet cards. PLIP works with lowest common denominator parallel ports and a lowest common denominator "4-bit" Parallel Data Transfer Cable. This kind of cable is also well known as the LapLink (yellow) Parallel Cable.
I recently updated PLIP to improve its reliability in configurations with PCs of widely varying vintage and speed. Among other things, I added an "Antique Hardware Hack" command line option to enable the use of parallel ports with inverted level IRQ sensing. I've also added a document: PLIP112.TXT, to the package. It reports on my update and my successes with PLIP v11.2 on DOS-DOS, DOS-Linux, and DOS-Windows 9x parallel port TCP/IP connections.
Download Russell Nelson's latest release of PLIP (version 11.1, June 1995).
Download
Michael Leonhard's DOSPLIP package (February 1999).
As explained in PLIP112.TXT, Mike's DOSPLIP package is an essential resource
for anyone who wants to use PLIP on a Windows 9x system. It probably
will enable the use of other "Real Mode" DOS Packet Drivers with Windows 9x,
as well. The link above mirrors
Mike's 1999 package.
So, you'll probably want to refresh the PLIP files it contains with
those from my PLIP v11.2 update, below.
Download Fred Macall's update of PLIP (version 11.2, July 2003).
When I had to put my oldest PC, Zeke, on INTERLNK/INTERSVR life support, I ran into a problem with PLIP's long interrupt service times. They were causing Disk not ready Critical Errors to be developed in Zeke's INTERLNK Device Driver. The whole story on this is given in my document: ILNKFIX.TXT .
To make that long story short, I've developed a successful small TSR, ILNKFIX.COM, to bypass the problem. It hooks into INTERLNK's Device Driver and keeps the IRQs for PLIP masked during INTERLNK operations. That averts the Disk not ready Critical Errors that I had been getting from INTERLNK!
Download my ILNKFIX.ZIP package (September 2004).
On or about 20 August 2005, my ISP's nccw.net e-mail service quit working. I was told that the available fix for this was to switch my account to Ikano's OhioHills.Com Internet service. I've made the switch, and my site's new URL is http://users.ohiohills.com/fmacall/
I've updated the site's top level pages accordingly. However, I am not updating any of my previously released .ZIP file packages solely to apply this change. I'll incorporate this URL change in my existing packages when I have other reason(s) to update them.
So, bear in mind that any reference(s) you find here to http://members.nccw.net/fmacall/ or http://users.nccw.net/fmacall/ should now be read as: http://users.ohiohills.com/fmacall/
I plan to extend this site, over the next few months, with some of the "important" links, some of my favorite links, and my resume. Some feedback would be nice. Please, let me know what you like or don't like about the site.
See you on the 'net.
Fred C. Macall K8GIV
31 August 2007
