Artisoft

This is the hardware and software manual for LANtastic, a peer-to-peer local area network operating system for DOS. This version of LANtastic came with its own twisted-pair adapter at two Mbps.

In the DOS era, before the coming of Windows 95 with its built-in TCP/IP networking capability, my institution was looking for an inexpensive way to connect desktop PCs, printers, modems, and CD-ROMs within our office workgroups. We did not yet envision interconnectivity throughout our enterprise. Our research led us to LANtastic which was nearly as popular (and cheaper) as the market leader at the time, Novell.

Being a peer-to-peer system, LANtastic operated the way we liked to run things within our office workgroups. We had no business to keep secret from each other. Therefore, our machines could be servers and workstations at the same time, sharing each others drives, printers, CD-ROMS, and modems transparently.

The manual that came with LANtastic made installation and configuration relatively easy, becoming very easy with practice. First, LANtastic required you to remove the cover from your PC and insert a network card in an available slot. Second, a LANtastic driver had to be be installed on your PC. Third, IRQ settings had to be confirmed and reconfigured if necessary. Fourth, specify whether you want your computer to share its resources, such as, its hard drive and printer. Fifth, specify the number of connections allowed on your computer. Sixth, specify whether you wish to share your modem.

When all your options have been set the way you want them, you will be shown a summary screen. If everything looks okay, press OK and let LANtastic complete its installation routine. Your computer must be rebooted before LANtastic will be activated on your PC.

It takes 45 minutes to one hour to install the LANtastic hardware and configure the software. After installing and configuring LANtastic, you were left with a stable, robust, and invisible networking arrangement within your workgroup.… (altro)