A little batch file help please

[trochia]

  First of all, a Happy Easter to everyone here on Computer Hope threads

OK, here's the situation...  My fathers small business has (2) computer systems that "are NOT" networked together. One is DOS based, and I do not know the version and the other is Windows. ( using FoxPro databse algo's )

  The one I am dealing with is the DOS system.  This "used" to be the main system until he purchased a different accounting system that was only windows based.

  The DOS system was created with my help and input and has all the engineering and inventory and this is Btrieve based.

  This system was created using the MAGIC programming interface...< should anyone here know of it>

  Now, for the nitty-gritty of the problem.

1) I am 350+ miles away from this computer

2) There is no one there really that is very computer literate to do what I need to do.

3) This server that this resides on, is an old ( an old as for todays standards) Everex server. It "used to" have mirrored 250meg drives from what I remember...and also an external Seagate tape backup system in place that ran once a week.

4)  A few weeks ago, the primary drive went down... a company was called in to "fix"... They had the tenacity to sell him a new hard drive while doing this, yet all the tech did was change the mirrored drive to the master...install the new drive they sold him...and told them he didn't know how to set up the mirroring...  ( pretty sad, hey? )

5)  I will not be able to physically get down there, and what I need to do is to somehow get the data off this machine...and here's where we are:

> The tape backup no longer works
> The box itself has no USB ports...( I was thinking flash/thumbnail drive )
> The box does not have any CD-Rom/writer
> Also, it does not have a modem or a connection to the internet as it was just used and still is...on a small network of only 4 pc's at the most.
> I have written a batch program to list/print to file all the contents of DIR> C:\ in which will write to a floppy the contents of the drive.  This will give me an idea of the directory structure in which I need to start my hunt.

Now, here is my plan...and please remember we will be working with my father who is 72 years old.. :-) and knows how to "mouse click" and that's about it......but I could do all this thru a floppy...and he could type in the bat file name.

  The thought of buying an external drive or a tape back up system has been considered..but all the software today is Windows based...for the install routines...so this will not be an option.

  I am planning on sending my old 286 laptop down which has Win98 on it, as someone will be able to go " port to port" with a serial cable, or ??

Just go NIC to NIC with the ethernet connection?

  What I am thinking...as I mentioned...no one knows to much...it's a Novell network set up...and no one knows that stuff either...so, here's the objective of the batch file.

  To go in and find the IP address..etc...connect to the drive etc...and transfer [COPY]the contents of drive on the server onto my laptop.

  Any help would be appreciated...or any other ideas also.

Thx, and again...have a happy Easter...

Jim


 

[Computer Hope Admin]

Jim,

Sounds like a real tough situation and unfortunately I'm not coming up with too many alternative solutions. Unfortunately I think regardless of how this is done it's not going to something simple or something that will likely be able to be done by someone who just knows how to "mouse click", without some assistance.

I would assume that this has already been thought about, but do any of the four other computer that this computer is networked with have any more capabilities than this one. Maybe you could transfer the information to one of them?

I do have some NetWare experience but haven't really used it much for over ten years so I'm extremely rusty. However, you'll likely be able to easily identify the network address if you have your father look at the autoexec.ncf file, which I believe is located in the system directory. This should have a bind line that contains the IP address of the machine.

However, all that being said, this is going to only give you the IP address information being used to connect to the network. If you're planning on connecting a Windows 98 machine to that network, you'd have to setup Novell on that machine before even being able to use that IP address to connect to it.

You could consider a direct cable connect where you connect a crossover cable between the Win98 machine and the old MS-DOS machine. This would probably be your best solution if you're planning on doing this over a network interface, the big problem is doing that with MS-DOS / NetWare, both of which I'm not exactly sure how you'd do. I've done plenty of crossover connections but all were done through a Windows environment.

If the computer has a CD-ROM drive an alternative solution that could also be attempted is to use a bootable Linux variant compatible with this old of a computer and use Samba to connect the two machines. Unfortunately again I'm not familiar with a variant that would be compatible with this old of a computer.

Maybe some other users have some suggestions that they can offer.

[trochia]

Nathan, thx for the reply...and this is a step in the right direction at least...as for NetWare , I also installed it "once" many many moons ago..<I know..it dates me here> but I think between the two of us, we could figure this out..

  My plan was to intitaly just have him toss the floppy in, and run my batch file to print the dir contents...to a floppy..and then have him e-mail it back to me...

  With the "autoexec.ncf " you just game me, that could also be printed to a disk...giving me a bit more about the system...  Now, there must be a DOS or NetWare based command to COPY?

HHmm, so now...onto google I go :-)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=novell+netware+expert+dos

  Now I am kicking myself in the *censored* for not knowing more about Netware...but at that time, it wasn't relevant for me to know.. :-(

Jim

[patio]

I smell a road trip...

[Computer Hope Admin]

Not sure what the phone situation is, but if you could just step him through MS-DOS and have him type out the contents of the autoexec.ncf (assuming it exists).

cd\system
type autoexec.ncf

Have him look for the bind line and read you the IP address. If not just add the standard MS-DOS commands to a batch file. For example.

c:
cd\
copy autoexec.* a:
cd\system
copy autoexec.ncf a:

copied the autoexec.* on root in case it was there or if the autoexec.bat contained any useful information. A batch file wouldn't be too difficult to simply copy the files. But if you're planning on setting up a batch file to setup a network that would take a lot of work.