EtherDFS is an 'installable filesystem' TSR for DOS. It maps a drive from a remote computer (typically Linux-based) to a local drive letter, using raw ethernet frames to communicate.Copyright © 2017-2023 Mateusz Viste
EtherDFS is an 'installable filesystem' TSR for DOS. It maps a drive from a remote computer (typically Linux-based) to a local drive letter, using raw ethernet frames to communicate.
For years, I was using LapLink to transfer files between my various "retro" computers. It works, yes, but it's also annoyingly slow and requires constant attention. One day I thought, "Wouldn't it be amazing if all my DOS PCs could share a common network drive, similarly to how NFS operates in the *nix world?". This day EtherDFS was born.
I clearly didn't invent anything - the concept has been around almost as long as the first IBM PC, and several commercial products addressed that need in the past. I am not aware, however, of any free and open-source solution. Besides, all the commercial solutions I know of require to set up a pretty complex network environment first, while EtherDFS doesn't need anything more than just a packet driver.
DOS client (TSR): etherdfs-0.8.3.zip
Linux server: ethersrv-linux-20180203.tar.xz
Older EtherDFS files can be found in the files area.
EtherDFS is versioned on subversion:
svn co svn://svn.mateusz.fr/etherdfs
The above svn location is the ONLY source of truth. You might see EtherDFS source code appearing in a variety of shady places like github and such, it has been uploaded there by other people, sometimes with dubious or suspect modifications.
These are adaptations of EtherDFS made by other people. I do not vouch for them.
Frank Haeseler made an EtherDFS version compatible with DOS 3.20 and 3.30: EtherDFS-3.
Eric Voirin proposes a fork of ethersrv-linux tolerant to varying filenames capitalization, thus allowing to serve files from a case-sensitive filesystem: ethersrv-linux-866.
Wondering about using EtherDFS on a no-NIC computer, using its LPT port? Read this article I posted on my gopher.