On: Floppy Disk Museum on a Bootable Floppy serving from a 286 PC

[andrewf]

Looking further I'm not sure this is what's happening. Startup is http://floppy.museum/files/autoexec.bat, calling into http://floppy.museum/files/httpd.bat, which will try to start DESQview but alternately run HTTPD directly under DOS.

The HTTPD software is https://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP_HTTPServ.html. "Up to 8 simultaneous requests can be serviced; an additional 8 requests can be queued." The status page http://floppy.museum/status.htm is (under HN load :) consistently reporting 8 live connections.

I'd guess there's one HTTPD running and DESQview lets someone use/admin/etc the system without shutting the HTTPD down.

[ltning → andrewf]

Yeah - idea is "remote management". It's tricky because packet drivers were never written with multiple applications running simultaneously in mind, DESQview is one big monstrous hack on 286, and both httpd and ftpd use direct screen writes which can't be virtualised on 286. I'll be testing a newer version of the httpd which uses bios screen writes, and a second NIC and packet driver for ftpd - but no idea if it's going to work :)

[andrewf → ltning]

Two network cards is a good idea. I went looking for a DESQview API a packet driver (or wrapper) could interface with, I found https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/computing/general/xdi.tec but the detailed documentation doesn't seem to be on the web.