virtualbox.org

mpack wrote:If you don't want us to see your desktop then don't include it in the screenshot. What's your host, is is Windows 7 or better? If so then search for the Snipping Tool, which makes it a (er) snip to grab any rectangular portion of the screen and save as a png, perfect for posting on forums (preserves screenshot detail better than JPEG).

Oh. Pfsh. No, I was too lazy to edit the image, even. I just put the image in paint and now I've been cropping it. Shush. I'm doing this stuff at like... 02:00, 03:00 in the morning.
Anyway, I have Win 10. I'll look at that snipping tool. Thank you!

Or use VirtualBox to take the screenshot. It's built-in functionality.

Ozymandias wrote:With that said, I don't really know how to establish a network login. Maybe you or someone else could help me a bit? Alright, let me try and figure this out a moment... allow me to share some of my ventures with you guys:
No network currently available??!
Okay... I'm gonna take a shot at this and guess that dialog means that I don't have anything set up on the host machine, right? Here's what I want to happen: I want to directly (not wirelessly, since I don't have a router) connect my VM to my host. I am lead to believe that somehow the "shared folder" thing will help in that. How close am I to getting the guest and host connected, and am I actually making any real progress? What should I do from there?

With all due respect, I get it with the screenshot stuff. I don't mean to be rude, but can we please drop that topic.. (any future screenshots I will make within sizable reason)? I need help with the next step. Just what I said, I am not really sure what to do now with this.

Sorry, but the last time I tried to set up a modern network with actual MS DOS was - well, never. It's not something I would even attempt. You get no help from the OS and every component is decades obsolete. I would have to research the subect, which seems like a lot of work: I appreciate that resurrecting this dead OS may be a hobby for you, but it isn't for me! Perhaps a DOS hobbyist website would be a useful additional resource for you.

@Ozymandias,

A simple search in your favoured search engine for "MS-DOS" networking will yield 100s of links, so there is no shortage of information on this relatively ancient and forgotten dark art.

Here's a couple to get you going:

- http://www.jacco2.dds.nl/samba/dos.html
- http://www.kompx.com/en/network-setup-i ... client.htm

The principles of setting up networking were/are relatively straightforward:

1. Set up the network (Work Group) on your Host Computer
2. Get the MS-DOS Client to communicate with it - The above mentioned sites (and others) should get you started on that quest.

You do have to understand that you are delving into an era when most computer management (and programming) was undertaken using a solely text based approach on 80 character screens, similar to working entirely using what we might now consider to be the 'Command Line'. MS-DOS, and its equivalents, PC-DOS etc., were an attempt to make that keyboard interface between the human side an the electronics more 'user-friendly'. However, that target 'user' was, in general, probably a university computing graduate and/or business/education user by definition, because real home computing for most people was simply unaffordable and unattractive, i.e. a 'real' IBM desktop computer (or an early Apple Mac) might easily have cost £5,000 (5,000-10,000 USD) in the 1980's for a system with 640Kb of RAM and a 20-40Mb Hard Drive. Business and University computers mostly used the CP/M Operating System, and the only commercial software most people were aware of were Wordstar, Lotus 123 and DBase, which would have cost around £1,200-1,500 (2,500 USD) per PC. No usable 'Windows' software really existed until those apps were ported to DOS, and some games started to appear, primarily to demonstrate the improved graphics capabilities of evolving hardware (still primitive by today's standards). Also, looking at the early list you provided of what you like to do with an MS-DOS VM, you are likely to be sadly disappointed if working purely in DOS: Few graphics applications were available and those that were had to be developed in Assembly Language/Machine Code; no Internet existed that would be recognisable by today's users - It was basically for text only communication, or for transmitting (transferring) data across closed telecoms systems until the mid-late 1990s. No software download sites or recognisable graphical Websites existed, nor were there any real/usable Web Browsers until the release of Netscape in 1994, which was a proprietary (commercial) program.

Well, thank you for the insight. Eh, who am I kidding. I've probably embarrassed myself trying this in the first place. I'm not at all surprised in what you said. I think I'm just going to give this a break. Thanks for the links, though!

It isn't an embarrassment to try something hard, Ozy. In fact there's a great satisfaction in being able to say "I got it to work!" After that one may just put it in a drawer and forget about it, but they accomplished the near-impossible! I don't think anyone here is laughing at you (I'm not, I'm intrigued, actually) for attempting this project, and finding out that one may not be able to do much with a networked DOS guest is just part of life's brick walls that pop up from time to time. Don't feel embarrassed, and keep trying, just to be able to say you did it.

Ozymandias, perhaps you are doing too much... I added some info (files config.sys, autoexec.bat, protocol.ini) at my post "Set up a (Free)DOS VM with networking (and shared folders)¨. Indeed, nothing beats a "live" connection!