Welcome to the forum!

I've heard that ImDisk from https://sourceforge.net/projects/imdisk-toolkit/ is supposed to be good, but I've not used it myself. To seed my disks I've either been copying files directly from the local disk of a DOS machine or using pkzip and FTP to move a cluster of files. (Pkzip makes it easier to move a large batch as it preserves timestamps and directory structure.)

Netdrive.sys gets assigned a drive letter from DOS - it doesn't get to choose the drive letter. It's based on the order in which the built-in block device driver recognizes BIOS devices and the order of block device drivers in CONFIG.SYS. If you need it to appear at a specific drive letter, alter the order of block device drivers in CONFIG.SYS. Other ways to do it involve manipulating DOS internal structures after the boot is complete, but that would make the device driver either very large or specific to one version of DOS. It is possible, but not something that adds a lot of value compared to the rest of the driver.

Other features will come time permitting. Listing disk images is easier but I need to keep the size of the EXE small so that might have to be in a separate program that uses a TCP socket. Swapping floppies is an advanced feature because it's tricky to do; if DOS has the file open or if there are pending writes that the server doesn't know about you can cause corruption.

AthlonBrick wrote on 2024-02-19, 06:39:

Do you know of any other windows tools that can make/manage a raw disk image to use with netdrive, or convert it to something 7z can use? I was wanting to avoid linux with this but winimage is clunky to use plus i dont own it, and osfmount somehow nuked my windows efi boot partition, that was fun. Though if i have to i could use linux to create the disk files for netdrive to use and then use other windows tools to manage it

Unfortunately I didn't find any other free Windows software which could mount the standard netdrive image files. There are some commercial products but I didn't test or buy them. Got a license for PowerISO but that one also didn't like the netdrive image files. Didn't have any issues with OSFMount so I am using that for now.

Maybe someday there will be a Windows 95/98/2000/XP/Vista/7/8/10/11 client as well so we can mount it and format it with the standard Windows utilities. Just a joke as that will never happen. 😜

mbbrutman wrote on 2024-02-19, 16:37:

Welcome to the forum!

I've heard that ImDisk from https://sourceforge.net/projects/imdisk-toolkit/ is supposed to be good, but I've not used it myself. To seed my disks I've either been copying files directly from the local disk of a DOS machine or using pkzip and FTP to move a cluster of files. (Pkzip makes it easier to move a large batch as it preserves timestamps and directory structure.)

Thanks, I'm still new to this and certainly feel like a caveman bashing a keyboard with a rock atm. Ill give Imdisk a try before resorting to making files with linux or obtaining a copy of winimage. If anyones wondering about my issue with OSFMount i think its specific to older versions of windows 10, using LTSC so its v1809.

Yoghoo wrote on 2024-02-19, 18:44:

Maybe someday there will be a Windows 95/98/2000/XP/Vista/7/8/10/11 client as well so we can mount it and format it with the standard Windows utilities. Just a joke as that will never happen. 😜

Time to get the Windows device driver book out ...

Kind of related, are there any programmers reading this who work in Windows or older versions of Windows? Finding DOS programmers is difficult, and I suspect that Windows people are equally hard to find.

Missed the ImDisk update. Vaguely remember that tool. I probably used that a long time ago so should probably work as well.

Also dug a little deeper and found Arsenal Image Mounter (https://arsenalrecon.com/downloads). Free for personal use. Tried it and works very well including creating image files. Think it will replace OSFMount for me. Needs .NET 8.0.2 though but will prompt and install automatically when running the program for the first time.

Gave it another go with the new versions (still had December ones for server and client) and I tried Arsenal's Image Mounter, to boot!

Success all around.

Since my first try last month, I upgraded my win10 PC (3rd gen Intel) to a 13th gen Intel Win11 PC.

Arsenal's Image Mounter mounted my December's .dsk image without issue. I was able to copy something to it (adlib tracker 2, which I wanted to try).
I just had to remember to boot with a specific configuration from my boot menu, which enables network and which loaded NETDRIVE.SYS as a device.

Adlib tracker seemed to require more conventional memory which was in shortage with everything required for netdrive, so after a reboot, it also seemed to require CWSDPMI.EXE in its same folder in order to work.
After both problems sorted out, success!
Looking forward to mount several .img disk images that seem to be popular on archive.org, several at once.

Very cool project and super useful.

I tried it on my PS/2 Model 35 and it worked perfect.

However on my newer Aptiva system (P5 133 + 3com etherlink 100 pci) I get a hang. It happens after I issue the netdrive connect command. The command seems to finish okay and returns to the command prompt, but then ~10s later it freezes. Rest of mtcp suite works fine.

Mu0n wrote on 2024-02-20, 18:59:

Gave it another go with the new versions (still had December ones for server and client) and I tried Arsenal's Image Mounter, to […]
Show full quote

Gave it another go with the new versions (still had December ones for server and client) and I tried Arsenal's Image Mounter, to boot!

Success all around.

Since my first try last month, I upgraded my win10 PC (3rd gen Intel) to a 13th gen Intel Win11 PC.

Arsenal's Image Mounter mounted my December's .dsk image without issue. I was able to copy something to it (adlib tracker 2, which I wanted to try).
I just had to remember to boot with a specific configuration from my boot menu, which enables network and which loaded NETDRIVE.SYS as a device.

Adlib tracker seemed to require more conventional memory which was in shortage with everything required for netdrive, so after a reboot, it also seemed to require CWSDPMI.EXE in its same folder in order to work.
After both problems sorted out, success!
Looking forward to mount several .img disk images that seem to be popular on archive.org, several at once.

In general good to hear ...

How much memory is your networking setup taking? NetDrive should only be using about 6KB, and a packet driver usually is between 5 and 10KB.

anderswk wrote on 2024-02-20, 19:43:

Very cool project and super useful.

I tried it on my PS/2 Model 35 and it worked perfect.

However on my newer Aptiva system (P5 133 + 3com etherlink 100 pci) I get a hang. It happens after I issue the netdrive connect command. The command seems to finish okay and returns to the command prompt, but then ~10s later it freezes. Rest of mtcp suite works fine.

I need some more details in order to help explain what might have happened. Email works if you don't want to go back and forth here.

• Are you using the December 30th or February version of the DOS device driver? (The first version had a bug in the UDP checksum routine that would block connectivity.)
• Is the machine crashing? What exactly is freezing, the whole machine or just the network drive letter?
• How did you load netdrive? (device= or devicehigh= work. Things like DEVLOAD do not.)
• What packet driver are you using?
• Do you have anything else interesting in your config.sys or loaded TSRs?

What I used to use for working with disk images under Windows was mtools running under Cygwin. mtools is a collection of command-line tools, so you'd create a configuration file which says x: is a particular partition in a particular image file, and then type "mdir x:". If I recall correctly, with some effort I was able to get the MToolsFM GUI for mtools built and running on Windows too. This was probably about 15 years ago, not sure if it'd be easier or harder now 😁 Since it was just a Linux tool ported to Windows, maybe now that everyone has Windows Subsystem for Linux it's not such a big win over just using Linux tools?

mbbrutman wrote on 2024-02-19, 21:45:

Kind of related, are there any programmers reading this who work in Windows or older versions of Windows?

A bit - only older versions though! I've barely scratched the surface of reading about device drivers though.

mbbrutman wrote on 2024-02-20, 20:37:

In general good to hear ...

How much memory is your networking setup taking? NetDrive should only be using about 6KB, and a packet driver usually is between 5 and 10KB.

I checked it out, I can get up to 613KB conventional memory ......... if I unload my packet driver which was enabled to get the network stuff going.
When it's loaded, I'm down to 581 KB.

Mu0n wrote on 2024-02-21, 01:49:

mbbrutman wrote on 2024-02-20, 20:37:

In general good to hear ...

How much memory is your networking setup taking? NetDrive should only be using about 6KB, and a packet driver usually is between 5 and 10KB.

I checked it out, I can get up to 613KB conventional memory ......... if I unload my packet driver which was enabled to get the network stuff going.
When it's loaded, I'm down to 581 KB.

Which packet driver is that? It seems like a hog ... most packet drivers that I've seen take 10 to 15K at most.

r6040pd
https://www.dmp.com.tw/tech/dmp-lib/dsock/

It's what worked with this WeeCee that uses an ICOP system-on-module with a Vortex86DX
https://www.icop.com.tw/product/SOM304RD-PI

Well, I've got a Cnet/Davicom card with DM9PCIPD using 36 KB...

Quick check; would the February version fix anything on my a0751h netbook? (Or is it not worth retesting)
I couldn't get netdrive to work with either the PXE Packet driver or the ODI Packet driver on this netbook (other mTCP programs run just fine)

mbbrutman wrote on 2024-02-20, 20:41:

I need some more details in order to help explain what might have happened. Email works if you don't want to go back and forth […]
Show full quote

anderswk wrote on 2024-02-20, 19:43:

Very cool project and super useful.

I tried it on my PS/2 Model 35 and it worked perfect.

However on my newer Aptiva system (P5 133 + 3com etherlink 100 pci) I get a hang. It happens after I issue the netdrive connect command. The command seems to finish okay and returns to the command prompt, but then ~10s later it freezes. Rest of mtcp suite works fine.

I need some more details in order to help explain what might have happened. Email works if you don't want to go back and forth here.

• Are you using the December 30th or February version of the DOS device driver? (The first version had a bug in the UDP checksum routine that would block connectivity.)
• Is the machine crashing? What exactly is freezing, the whole machine or just the network drive letter?
• How did you load netdrive? (device= or devicehigh= work. Things like DEVLOAD do not.)
• What packet driver are you using?
• Do you have anything else interesting in your config.sys or loaded TSRs?

I'm using Feb 18 2024 release, but also tried Dec 30 with same result.

DEVICEHIGH or just DEVICE and nothing else but himem.sys. It's Windows 98 DOS mode, btw.

Packet driver is "3Com EtherLink PCI Bus Master Packet Driver v5.2.6", 3C90XPD.EXE.

Re: memory usage: I have some data points to share.

1. Xircom PE3: 7136
2. PCNTPK (AMD PCNet): 18256
3. Davicom UM9008: (16 bit ISA): 4656 bytes
4. LinkSys LNE100 (PCI): 26816

So maybe the rule here is that the PCI packet drivers seem to consume more memory.

mbbrutman wrote on 2024-02-19, 21:45:

Yoghoo wrote on 2024-02-19, 18:44:

Maybe someday there will be a Windows 95/98/2000/XP/Vista/7/8/10/11 client as well so we can mount it and format it with the standard Windows utilities. Just a joke as that will never happen. 😜

Time to get the Windows device driver book out ...

Kind of related, are there any programmers reading this who work in Windows or older versions of Windows? Finding DOS programmers is difficult, and I suspect that Windows people are equally hard to find.

If you're serious, I think the retro Windows version would be a SCSI miniport driver, and if coded carefully, they are cross-compatible between NT4 and Win95.

For modern Windows I'm sure there must be a "block device in userspace" layer.

@anderswk

I'm still missing some detail - what exactly is the machine doing when it stops working? Is the whole machine frozen? Is it just the network drive that doesn't work? You say it happens after 10 seconds - is it just idle during that 10 seconds or are you doing something during that 10 seconds?

Win98 DOS is fine - I just tested it on a P133 system with a LinkSys PCI card. I don't have a 3Com Etherlink 100 that matches your card to test with.

Unfortunately without having access to the machines that don't work it's difficult to figure out what might be going wrong. I'm not doing anything tricky or fancy in the code that would be different from the way another mTCP program uses it. The leading cause for problems like this is stack corruption. I think I allocated a generous amount of stack space but it is possible a specific packet driver needs more. If I sent you a debug version via email that has more stack space allocated would you be willing to test it?

jakethompson1 wrote on 2024-02-22, 01:55:

If you're serious, I think the retro Windows version would be a SCSI miniport driver, and if coded carefully, they are cross-compatible between NT4 and Win95.

For modern Windows I'm sure there must be a "block device in userspace" layer.

I'm not seriously thinking about tackling a Windows device driver. While it might be interesting, I think I might have too much time already invested in all of this.