3 ms·

How did one do network programming in dos? Did it have a tcp/ip stack and winsock.h funtions or equivalent? And threading? Did you use Djgpp? I've always wonde

How did one do network programming in dos? Did it have a tcp/ip stack and winsock.h funtions or equivalent? And threading? Did you use Djgpp? I've always wondered about that. Edit: browsed the DJGPP website and found answers, there are libs available.

Jedd 12y ago
winsock may have come a bit later ;) Read up on the Wollongong TCP stack - very much an MS-DOS stack that I have mixed memories (some fond, some horrendous) of.
pjc50 12y ago
You didn't, mostly. In DOS times you only had one core, so there was no particular necessity for multithreading. Network card drivers were available using the NDIS standard: http://www.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Networking_FreeDOS_-_NDIS_driver_installation http://www.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Networking_FreeDOS_-_N... DOS games tended to roll their own protocol on top of the raw packet drivers. This is why they were often LAN-only. Generally in the DOS era you didn't have Internet; it existed, but wasn't widely deployed. DJGPP got some use (see the PCGPE as well), but professional game development tended to use Watcom: http://www.openwatcom.org/index.php/Project_History http://www.openwatcom.org/index.php/Project_History
Natsu 12y ago
We didn't do anything like network programming where I worked. We just copied files on and off of network shares with batch files or such and let the Novell drivers handle the network. So you'd download the day's schedule or updates by copying the file off the network and use a few primitive means of coordinating things like using 'flag' files for signaling and then if exists xxx / echo foo > do_bckup.txt type things in your batch files. It's very primitive, but most things were at least doable and you could always write small programs to extend your scripts if need be.

3 ms·

How did one do network programming in dos? Did it have a tcp/ip stack and winsock.h funtions or equivalent? And threading? Did you use Djgpp? I've always wonde

by marktangotango 12y ago

Jedd 12y ago
winsock may have come a bit later ;) Read up on the Wollongong TCP stack - very much an MS-DOS stack that I have mixed memories (some fond, some horrendous) of.
pjc50 12y ago
You didn't, mostly. In DOS times you only had one core, so there was no particular necessity for multithreading. Network card drivers were available using the NDIS standard: http://www.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Networking_FreeDOS_-_NDIS_driver_installation http://www.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Networking_FreeDOS_-_N... DOS games tended to roll their own protocol on top of the raw packet drivers. This is why they were often LAN-only. Generally in the DOS era you didn't have Internet; it existed, but wasn't widely deployed. DJGPP got some use (see the PCGPE as well), but professional game development tended to use Watcom: http://www.openwatcom.org/index.php/Project_History http://www.openwatcom.org/index.php/Project_History
Natsu 12y ago
We didn't do anything like network programming where I worked. We just copied files on and off of network shares with batch files or such and let the Novell drivers handle the network. So you'd download the day's schedule or updates by copying the file off the network and use a few primitive means of coordinating things like using 'flag' files for signaling and then if exists xxx / echo foo > do_bckup.txt type things in your batch files. It's very primitive, but most things were at least doable and you could always write small programs to extend your scripts if need be.