On Thu, 2011-09-08 at 02:35 +0530, Rajagopal Swaminathan wrote:

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I would suggest setting up a CentOS server with Samba and convert the DOS network stack, if you can. Samba appears to be much more supportable, currently. Take a look at the FreeDOS project, too, as an example of getting DOS to work in a more recent environment. The biggest concern (after getting the clients to talk to Samba) is that there have been a few choices made in Samba with respect to file sharing/locking mechanisms. With old software, you may have to look at those settings.

I am not sure about freedos as there is a Piece of custom built ISA hardware and the forget about replacing it. there is a budget(was there any?) constraint at clients end.

Just suggesting looking at the docs for ideas.

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I google'd netware virtual machine and saw a few links to virtualizing Netware 3 under VMWare which might give you some insights.

No additional cash flow for software :p ..... :)

Just another suggested reading for ideas.

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Either way, do it in a separate test environment to work out any issues prior to production deployment.

Even buying is a hard disk is a constraint. (Cash outflow constraint, remember :) )

If you can't buy hardware, then you already have a Linux box running KVM?

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If I hadn't been strongly encouraged (successfully) to de-clutter my software repository, I'd pull out my old Netware 3.12 disks and try installing on a virtual machine.

If only I had that luxury of having those original _working_ floppy disks.

If I had to virtualize an existing machine, I'd boot the equipment with a Linux Live CD and copy (using dd/ssh) the raw disk data to a virtual disk on the virtual machine server. Verify the copy is accurate with md5sum. Then, make another copy to start a virtual machine with.

I'd still suggest your best option would be to take one of the DOS clients and get it to connect to a Samba server and migrate the data.