Boot to DOS (Win98SE) only with networking

[RetroMIDI]

Help!

Software is written in Borland Pascal 7 to run under Win98 MS-DOS and
makes use of MAIL SLOTS to communicate across a network between dozens
of PCs in a sound/music/graphics "sculpture" or installation.

Problem is to get a Win98 MS-DOS network implemented.

Things run fine with a full-screen DOS window under Windows 98 SE. But
most machine cycles are wasted/stolen by Windows. Thus Win98 DOS
"command prompt only" is much better.

Know next-to-nothing about networking and battling to learn. Have tried
network boot disks available on the Net (such as Bart's) but get a
system crash as soon as software runs. Commands such as NET VIEW do not
work either.

Expert guidance over a few weeks is needed.

Thanks in advance to anyone with advice.

 

[Rotes Sapiens]

Software is written in Borland Pascal 7 to run under Win98 MS-DOS and
makes use of MAIL SLOTS to communicate across a network between dozens
of PCs in a sound/music/graphics "sculpture" or installation.

Problem is to get a Win98 MS-DOS network implemented.

Things run fine with a full-screen DOS window under Windows 98 SE. But
most machine cycles are wasted/stolen by Windows. Thus Win98 DOS
"command prompt only" is much better.

I wouldn't be too worried about windows CPU overhead. If you use a
program like wintop when there is no MSDOS box or program running, you
can see the overhead is about 3%.
Most of the CPU cycles are actually stolen by the msdsos command
prompt box, not by the windows GUI. I don't know if there is a Delphi
CPU idle yield timeslice command, but it would free up CPU time.

Know next-to-nothing about networking and battling to learn. Have tried
network boot disks available on the Net (such as Bart's) but get a
system crash as soon as software runs. Commands such as NET VIEW do not
work either.

I think you might be better off using dos under windows, or just use
windows networking. Once the windows networking is established, you
can use msdos 'net' commands anyway.



Sig:
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
-- Isaac Asimov