From the early 80s there were third-party programs such as LapLink and Norton Commander to allow you to use your serial or parallel port to transfer files from one PC to another via a cable, and DOS versions 6.0 and up got two utilities, INTERLNK and INTERSVR, that did the same thing. Out of the box, none of the flavours of DOS from Microsoft, IBM, or Digital Research supported connectivity to a network. The short answer to this question is, no. Does DOS Even Have Networking Capability? All computers involved needed a modem and be connected to their telephone line. Some games did support modem play for gaming with friends not in the same building as you. As such I won't be covering that in this article. If you want to play retro multiplayer games, most of these use short serial cable connections between just 2 computers and don't require any more hardware than the cable itself. So what are the benefits of getting your retro PC onto a computer network? The two key benefits are: It wasn't really until the mid-90s that modems entered the home. In the US it was far more commonplace to connect your home computer to BBSs and other networks via a modem, but here in the UK it just wasn't something we did much of, leaving the concept of networking to the corporate and educational establishments. In 1990 I had no intention or means to connect to anything over a network.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |