Re: Connect to DOS box
On Fri, Jun 22, 2007 at 08:58:33PM +0100, John K Masters wrote:
> At work I use a networked box that runs from Novell Netware on DOS v5.0
> This runs very old accounting software. The box itself is a P120 with
> 16 MB RAM and a small HD (about 128MB). No OS on the HD.
>
> I have managed to persuade the somewhat ITphobic management to provide me
> a standalone box on which to analyse the daily data. Obviously I have
> installed Debian Etch. Having written a few Python scripts to take the
> output of printed reports and parse them into an OO spreadsheet it is
> all coming together.
>
> However, to transfer the files I have to use a floppy disc. How can I
> connect the 2 boxes? The DOS box cannot boot from CD, has no installed
> OS (boots into network off floppy) and has only a serial connection
> spare. The network is 10BASE-2 thin ethernet.
>
> Regards, John
Another useful software for your toolbox could be etherboot.
A few years ago, I used a floppy image generated by their rom-o-matic to boot
KNOPPIX over the network on an old machine without PXE support.
The servers in KNOPPIX supporting network boot (DHCP, TFTP, ...) are called
"terminal server", which is somewhat misleading.
I'm not sure if it is possible at all to run a full-featured Linux live
CD on a machine with 16 MB of RAM, even in console mode without X.
You might want to try an older or cut-down live CD distribution with a
smaller RAM footprint.
Regards,
Mirko
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