mTCP

A nice little TCP/IP stack for IBM PCs, XTs PCjrs, and newer machines

Current version: October 29th, 2011

mTCP is a TCP/IP stack designed to run well on the oldest IBM PCs and similar machines. Applications built using mTCP include the following:

a DHCP client for auto-configuring your machine to use on your network
a Telnet client for connecting to servers running Telnet or online games
an FTP client for transferring files
an IRC client (IRCjr) for chatting on IRC networks
the Ping command for checking basic network connectivity
the Netcat command which can be used like a copy command, except it works over the network
an SNTP client for getting the current date and time from NTP servers on the network
an FTP server allowing multiple concurrent connections, a sandbox area for untrusted users, etc.
HTGet for downloading files/content straight from a web server

All of these applications will run well on the oldest, slowest PC you can find. I routinely use them on a 1983 IBM PCjr because nothing beats the fun of putting a 25+ year old machine on the Internet.

Want to see how fast mTCP is? Here are some performance measurements for FTP and for raw socket performance: mTCP Performance notes

Requirements

mTCP applications should work on any DOS PC with an Ethernet adapter, SLIP or PPP connection. My personal testing includes:

Generic AMD 386-40 with an NE2000 Ethernet adapter, DOS 5, and a VGA display
IBM PC XT at 4.77Mhz with a 3Com 3C503 Ethernet adapter, DOS 3.3, and a CGA display
IBM PC XT at 4.77Mhz with a Xircom PE3-10BT parallel-port to Ethernet adapter, DOS 5, and an MDA display
IBM PCjr at 4.77Mhz with a NEC V20 CPU, Xircom PE3-10BT parallel-port to Ethernet adapter and DOS 5
IBM PCjr at 4.77Mhz with a NEC V20 CPU, Western Digital 8003 Ethernet Adapter, and DOS 3.3
IBM PS/2 Model 25, 3Com 3C503 Ethernet adapter, and DOS 5
IBM PC Convertible 5140, Xircom PE3-10BT parallel-port to Ethernet adapter and DOS 3
IBM L40sx laptop, Xircom PE3-10BT parallel-port to Ethernet adapter and DOS 6.3

Ethernet cards are supported if they have a packet driver. SLIP and PPP connections are also supported using a packet driver. The memory requirement varies, but it ranges from 96KB to 256KB depending on the application. (The FTP server requires a bit more.)

Other environments such as DOSBox, SwsVpkt, VirtualBox and VMWare work fine too. See "Using mTCP in Virtual Environments" for details. A more comprehensive list of machines and network cards known to work with mTCP can be found here: http://code.google.com/p/mtcp/wiki/TestedMachines

News!

mTCP is being officially included in FreeDOS 1.1 (http://www.freedos.org/) .
mTCP was mentioned during the Retro Computing Roundtable, show #14.

Recent changes

October 2011: Upgrades and fixes for the FTP server; added user input editing to IRCjr, fix Telnet options negotiation
July 2011: HTGet added
May 2011: mTCP is open source! Download the source at http://code.google.com/p/mtcp/
May 2011: Add Client-To-Client protocol to IRCjr, add -retries and -timeouts to DHCP, and minor enhancements
April 2011: Add a multi-session version of IRCjr, make the FTP server coexist nicely with FileZilla, and some bug fixes
January 2011: Increase default stack size to improve stability on older machines when using STACKS=0,0
January 2011: Add new FTP server, fix minor bugs in FTP client

Downloads

Get the current set of mTCP applications for DOS here! mTCP_2011-10-29.zip
Source code is available here: http://code.google.com/p/mtcp/

The zip file includes all of the current applications and TXT files explaining how to set them up and use them.

Interested in seeing the source code that lets you talk directly to a packet driver? I've taken the lowest layer of my code and packaged it with a sample application that shows you how to interface a C program with the software interrupt mechanism used by packet drivers. Check it out here: mTCP_tcpacket.html

Support

I am interested in hearing about your experiences with the mTCP applications and any comments you have. Please email me at mbbrutman@gmail.com.

Powered By ... Open Watcom (http://openwatcom.org/)

Open Watcom is an open source C and C++ compiler that I use to do most of my mTCP work now. I use a version that runs natively under Windows XP and generates 16 bit DOS code that runs on my oldest PCs. The compiler does a decent job of optimizing code and the runtime is current and up-to-date.

The current release (1.9) is new as of June 2010.

Created July 29th, 2008, Last updated October 29th, 2011
(C)opyright Michael B. Brutman, mbbrutman@gmail.com