Hi, is it possible to do distributed computing with anetwork of several computers with freedos or MS-DOS 6.22, what software can I download to acheive this and what are the differences between distributed computing and parallel computing?. Thanks

Well, basically it IS possible. If i understand you correctly, the best option might be for the sake of ease of use to use a normal ethernet. [1] You can find dos drivers ("DOS socket drivers") for most network adapters on their respective manufacturer's websites. Then, as even freeDOS and the likes have no immanent tcp stack (afaik), you have to code your program's communications using a DOS tcp library (e.g. the [2] "wattcp" waterloo library which is cool ;). (just type "wattcp" in google to find it, it is implemented for borland c i think) the greatest difference between parallel and distibuted algorithms - as they are principally comparable - is basically the fact that in distributed computing, you have to take into account the network transfers which are, even at 1gbit, EXTREMELY slow compared to parallel computing interprocessor transfers (or real shared memory architectures!!) thus, distributed computing is a type of parallel computing only suitable for problems that you can thoroughly partition into distinct sub-problems, like e.g. SETI@Home (client gets a block of data, calculates and sends back yes or no, basically..) if you operate on a block of data, and you can treat every sub-block without looking at other parts, then you can use distributed computing. other parallel problems like e.g. parallel array comparisons would require a much too large amount of data (in smaller blocks) to be transferred, so you are better off waiting a bit longer on a one-proc. system;) if you want to experiment with distr. comp., one thing which is _fairly_ easy to implement as a distibuted app, and is also quite efficient, is a raytracer (take the sources of POVray and modify them a bit :) alternatively, you could wait for the first quantum computer. at that time, parallel algorithms will get really funny :D