[Freedos-user] Ethernet card - how to install in Freedos

[Simon Townsend]

Hi Wise ones,
I've just installed Freedos on my old pc, now I want to add add an ethernet card. Its also an old one think its by realtek.
Is there a way of finding out what it is from within FREEDOS, which dos drivers I will need and how to install it and get it working form my home LAN?
I don't want to have to reinstall Freedos just for the new hardware.

Thanks!

Si




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[Fabien Meghazi]

Post by Simon Townsend
Is there a way of finding out what it is from within FREEDOS, which dos
drivers I will need and how to install it and get it working form my home

First step :
*************

Find a packet driver for your network card.
It should be a simple .exe or .com.
In order to find the good one, you should know what chip your card is built on.
If it's a realtek, just have a look at the bigger chip on the card,
you should see a name
such as RTLXXXX

If it's a 10T, it's most probably a RTL8029 (should be ne2000 compatible too)
if it's a 10/100 it's most probably a RTL8139

Have a look at this page, hopefully you will find the good driver for your card.
http://www.georgpotthast.de/sioux/packet.htm

When running a packet driver, you have to specify some parameters
(Hardware address, irq, ...) (check yourpacketdriver.exe /? for help)
I have a rtl8139 and I run the packet driver like this :

rtl8139.exe 0x7e

Normaly, by just running the packet driver, I think you are already
good to run network games, eg: duke nukem. (not 100% sure about this)


Second step :
****************

Install wattcp
If you have the freedos cdrom in drive D: then search for the folder
where the wattcp package is hold.
(I don't remember exactly but I think it should be :
d:\freedos\packages\net\wat?????.zip or something like this)
Once the good file is located, you can install it by using fdpkg

fdpkg /install wat?????.zip

Third step :
*************

Configure your c:\fdos\wattcp.cfg file (if not already done by
installer) depending on your home network configuration.


Four step :
*************

Install some programs to check if you can use your network.
Find arachne (a web browser for dos). It is located on the cdrom too.

cdd d:\freedos\packages\net\
fdpkg /install arachne??.zip

Then launch arachne, answer to the config questions, type
www.gooogle.com in the address bar and cross your fingers.

[Eric Auer]

Hi Simon,

Post by Simon Townsend
I've just installed Freedos on my old pc, now I want to add add an
ethernet card. Its also an old one think its by realtek.

Then it is probably the classic RTL8029 (10mbit) or RTL8139 (100mbit)
chipset. It should be possible to use generic NE2000 / NE2k drivers
with those, but it is often better to use drivers for Realtek cards.

Post by Simon Townsend
Is there a way of finding out what it is from within FREEDOS, which dos
drivers I will need and how to install it and get it working form my
home LAN?

To find out which packet driver you need, you can use PCISLEEP
(if it is not part of your FreeDOS install, just search the web)
to get a list of PCI / AGP / PCIe / onboard-PCI devices in your
PC. Look at the devices in the "network" category. You can search
the web for the device ID, but often you can already guess the
type from the number. A nice lookup service is the PCI IDs page:
http://pci-ids.ucw.cz/iii/?i=10ec8139 for example tells you that
device 10ec:8139 is RTL-8139. The subsystem ID would show you
which brand of RTL8139 based device you have, but this makes no
difference for the choice of driver: All RTL8139 should work
with the classic RTSPKT 100mbit driver which can be found in
various collections like the Sioux one mentioned by Fabien.

As Fabien said, the settings for your home LAN go into wattcp.cfg,
but you can often get things working with a very simple wattcp.cfg
which only says "use DHCP", more or less. There are explanations
about which variables can be set and to which values inside the
default wattcp.cfg file :-).

Post by Simon Townsend
I don't want to have to reinstall Freedos just for the new hardware.

No problem, you only have to replace the packet driver.

But you are right, there is some batch file in the packet
driver package which automatically selects a driver. You
could try to use FDPKG to remove this package and install
it again to automatically get some updated configuration
after you change to new network hardware. Please ask
Blair (blairdude at gmail.com) if you cannot find out
how to trigger this automatic setup. No matter if it is
you or Blair who found the answer, please tell on this
list how it works as soon as you know :-).

You can also use bootdisks like www.netbootdisk.com or the
www.veder.com/nwdsk/ which contain a pile of packet drivers
and some mechanism to automatically decide which driver is
suitable for your hardware. After booting nwdsk or netboot-
disk, you can look at the generated config and copy the
relevant settings to your FreeDOS box :-). If you cannot
find config in files, you can still do "mem /d /p" or use
similar tools to find out which drivers got loaded :-).

Eric

[Ron Spruell]

Ron Said > screen with 1 2 or 3 selecting EMM386 with himem and I selected 3

Eric said > I hope this is the choice -without- emm386. Strange, my fdbasecd
only contains 1 "install" / 2 "safe mode"...? Ah now I understand options 3
4 and 5 are livecd and fdbasecd is too small so it does not contain the
livecd :-).

Ron Said > No I selected the 3 option which includes Himem.sys and EMM386
The statement below send me to nocd when it doesn't find shsurdrv.exe in
that directory

If not exist X:\Fdos\bin\shsurdrv.exe goto nocd

Eric said> Hmm interesting I think X: is the cdrom drive letter but shsurdrv
is in the "odin" directory, not in "fdos"...?
Blair should be able to answer this... Maybe it is at the right place in the
larger CDs, I only have the small fdbasecd here...

Ron Said> That is exactly what is in the fdauto.bet I also was wondering
what the X meant. I used an old Norton's Windows 95 recovery 3 1/2 inch
floppy so that I had a way to look. I used their editdisk that was on the
Floppy disk.

That's what is on the CD in the fdauto.bat on the CD then it must be going
to nocd and then the nest thing that comes up while booting is Echo There is
no CD Rom or the wrong CD-ROM if I press escape then it boots but
immediately drops to the A prompt because it sends it to END.

As you said I guess said I need that file shurdrv on the floopy I
guess to make it work. Can you are someone attach it...

Eric said> It already is on the CD, but in another directory. Blair??

Ron said> You are right eric it is in the BIN directory don't know why it
didn't pick it up and run it maybe something to do with the X: Maybe I
should try and change it to A: because that's what it named my CD rom drive.

Ron Said> ... I don't see the message LiveCD or anything on the screen
because it drops to end statement it is in fdauto.bat so I think I'm not
booting all of FreeDos. At the least I'm not running shsurdrv.exe

Eric said > Well there should be something like:

for %%X in ( 3 4 5 ) do if "%config%"=="%%X" goto livecd

Ron Said > This statement is more than likely in fdauto.bat but I never get
there because it drops to end when it doesn't find shsurdrv.exe


Eric

PS: Please answer on the list again, I just sent you some intermediate
information off-list so you or Blair can add more details and then continue
the discussion on the list :-).

[Ron Spruell]

I want to thank all of you for helping me try and get FreeDos to load all
the way especially Eric since I have been a thorn in his side for a while so
thanks Eric for putting up with me.<BG> I do get the kernel to load and can
use the question mark to see the programs that did load. It's hard for me to
do much since I don't have the use of my mouse or the printer and I have
finally found the other night and old Norton System works 3 1/2 inch disk
that had an editor their editor call diskedit. I was looking for a floppy
that had edit on it and will again look for it but I believe I can use
diskedit to edit the fdauto.bat file. I got started trying to load FreeDos
because one of the programs I love uses FreeDos and it's called Spin Rite
v6.0. You know he has the NFTS file system working in Spin Rite v6.0 since
it will check FAT and New File technology also so it would be nice if we
could get Steve I think the author is Steve but any way it would be nice if
he would share the NFTS file system with other users in the FreeDos
community. Not being a programmer and not having any tools since FreeDos
refuses to laod all the way for me, I will again load what I can of FreeDos
and try an step thru the fdauto.bat and see if indeed it is that statement
with the X in it that keeps shsurdrv from loading. I do know Eric, because I
looked on the CD after I loaed the kernel of FreeDos that shsurdrv is in the
A:\fdos\bin\shsurdrv.exe so I think and I will try changing the X to A: and
see if this will get the shsurdrv to load it maybe that simple. For what
ever reason and you guys would know FreeDos renamed my CD rom drive that I
load FreeDos from to A: drive and my floppy 3 1/2 inch drive is now my B:
drive which doesn't hurt a thing/ I can remember having a full featured PC
with a 5 meg byte drive and that was huge at the time so my CD rom drive is
a whole bigger than that. Back then all programs were programmed in assembly
so they weren't nor did they have to be big.

Ron Spruell Sr.

-----Original Message-----
From: freedos-user-***@lists.sourceforge.net
[mailto:freedos-user-***@lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of Ron Spruell
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 8:17 AM
To: freedos-***@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] how to install in Freedos


Ron Said > screen with 1 2 or 3 selecting EMM386 with himem and I selected 3

Eric said > I hope this is the choice -without- emm386. Strange, my fdbasecd
only contains 1 "install" / 2 "safe mode"...? Ah now I understand options 3
4 and 5 are livecd and fdbasecd is too small so it does not contain the
livecd :-).

Ron Said > No I selected the 3 option which includes Himem.sys and EMM386
The statement below send me to nocd when it doesn't find shsurdrv.exe in
that directory

If not exist X:\Fdos\bin\shsurdrv.exe goto nocd

Eric said> Hmm interesting I think X: is the cdrom drive letter but shsurdrv
is in the "odin" directory, not in "fdos"...?
Blair should be able to answer this... Maybe it is at the right place in the
larger CDs, I only have the small fdbasecd here...

Ron Said> That is exactly what is in the fdauto.bet I also was wondering
what the X meant. I used an old Norton's Windows 95 recovery 3 1/2 inch
floppy so that I had a way to look. I used their editdisk that was on the
Floppy disk.

That's what is on the CD in the fdauto.bat on the CD then it must be going
to nocd and then the nest thing that comes up while booting is Echo There is
no CD Rom or the wrong CD-ROM if I press escape then it boots but
immediately drops to the A prompt because it sends it to END.

As you said I guess said I need that file shurdrv on the floopy I
guess to make it work. Can you are someone attach it...

Eric said> It already is on the CD, but in another directory. Blair??

Ron said> You are right eric it is in the BIN directory don't know why it
didn't pick it up and run it maybe something to do with the X: Maybe I
should try and change it to A: because that's what it named my CD rom drive.

Ron Said> ... I don't see the message LiveCD or anything on the screen
because it drops to end statement it is in fdauto.bat so I think I'm not
booting all of FreeDos. At the least I'm not running shsurdrv.exe

Eric said > Well there should be something like:

for %%X in ( 3 4 5 ) do if "%config%"=="%%X" goto livecd

Ron Said > This statement is more than likely in fdauto.bat but I never get
there because it drops to end when it doesn't find shsurdrv.exe


Eric

PS: Please answer on the list again, I just sent you some intermediate
information off-list so you or Blair can add more details and then continue
the discussion on the list :-).



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[Eric Auer]

Hi Ron,

nice to know that Spinrite for DOS now supports NTFS, but what
does Spinrite do? Defragging, disk checking...?

About the drive letters: You cannot boot a full DOS from raw
cdrom, so we use a virtual A: drive. The contents of that
drive are on a diskimage on the cdrom. The normal diskette
drive is called B: while the virtual drive is used - only
when you have booted from cdrom, in other words. There are
cdrom drivers on the virtual A:, which allow DOS to use
the "normal contents" of the cdrom after booting. I think
DOS will call the normal cdrom drive X: then.

About the whereabouts of shsurdrv and problems with the
LiveCD caused by them, please ask Blair Campbell (email
blairdude at gmail dot com) whether this is a known bug
in FreeDOS 1.0 and if so, how you can fix it. Maybe he
can just make a fixed ISO for you...

Eric :-)

PS: You talked about a 5 MB harddisk in the old days...
Actually you can squeeze almost all of "FreeDOS base"
on 3 diskettes today, including lots of documentation.
I once booted Windows 3.1 from a tiny 256 MB USB stick,
which felt weird as it originally lived on 40 MB HD and
a few MB of RAM. Today you have gigs of USB and RAM...

[Ron Spruell]

I'm surprised because I thought you guys would have owned this forever. But
knowing how programming intensive you guys are you may not need it. Go to
Steve Gibson web site http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm he is a stomp down
good programmer who still programs in assembly, so all of his programs are
very small but and this is a big but they are very powerful. Spin Rite will
recover a hard drive any hard drive unless you have physical damaged it
dropped it off a 4 story building that is unusable won't work can't read or
write to the hard drive, this program, that will boot your machine from a 3
1/2 inch floppy using FreeDos as the operating system of his choose I guess
because it's free runs his program in FreeDos and fixes your problems.
Version 5 would only work for FAT systems but version 6 his latest works in
FAT "File Allocation Table" or NTFS "New technology File System" I had this
program save my rear a lot of times. It has fixed drives I had folks tell me
that were not fixable.

He also has a lot of Free programs and I have used a few of them a couple of
the free programs are for the ZIP drives and several are to keep your
computer safe from hacker closing or at least letting you know what and
which ports are making you at risk. O well when you get there you will see.
As you can tell I like his programs and he helps and for free and he is very
knowledgeable.

Ron Spruell Sr.

-----Original Message-----
From: freedos-user-***@lists.sourceforge.net
[mailto:freedos-user-***@lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of Eric Auer
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2008 7:32 PM
To: freedos-***@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] how to install in Freedos


Hi Ron,

nice to know that Spinrite for DOS now supports NTFS, but what
does Spinrite do? Defragging, disk checking...?

About the drive letters: You cannot boot a full DOS from raw
cdrom, so we use a virtual A: drive. The contents of that
drive are on a diskimage on the cdrom. The normal diskette
drive is called B: while the virtual drive is used - only
when you have booted from cdrom, in other words. There are
cdrom drivers on the virtual A:, which allow DOS to use
the "normal contents" of the cdrom after booting. I think
DOS will call the normal cdrom drive X: then.

About the whereabouts of shsurdrv and problems with the
LiveCD caused by them, please ask Blair Campbell (email
blairdude at gmail dot com) whether this is a known bug
in FreeDOS 1.0 and if so, how you can fix it. Maybe he
can just make a fixed ISO for you...

Eric :-)

PS: You talked about a 5 MB harddisk in the old days...
Actually you can squeeze almost all of "FreeDOS base"
on 3 diskettes today, including lots of documentation.
I once booted Windows 3.1 from a tiny 256 MB USB stick,
which felt weird as it originally lived on 40 MB HD and
a few MB of RAM. Today you have gigs of USB and RAM...


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Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008.
http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/

[Ron Spruell]

By the way I'm still hoping that someone will tell me what is going wrong
when I boot or try to boot into freedos. It has to be simple but I will say
this I'm pushed to find programming problems when my machine is working and
I have editors so I can look and change boot programs so with out anything
when I try to boot into freedos and not really knowing what is going on or
why since I'm not a programmer I have little or no help finding the problem.

If I could look at and edit the fdauto.bat file from vista or print or have
a print out of that file it would help. Also If I knew this was the only
file that loads things into freedos and I guess it is. If I could get
shsudrv to load I bet it would run and I'm just guessing. I still wonder
about that x:\fdos\bin and yes Eric that file is in that director I
looked.<BG> Maybe different for your type of load but not mine.

Ron Spruell Sr.

[Bernd Blaauw]

Post by Eric Auer
To find out which packet driver you need, you can use PCISLEEP
(if it is not part of your FreeDOS install, just search the web)
to get a list of PCI / AGP / PCIe / onboard-PCI devices in your
PC. Look at the devices in the "network" category. You can search
the web for the device ID, but often you can already guess the
http://pci-ids.ucw.cz/iii/?i=10ec8139 for example tells you that
device 10ec:8139 is RTL-8139. The subsystem ID would show you
which brand of RTL8139 based device you have, but this makes no
difference for the choice of driver: All RTL8139 should work
with the classic RTSPKT 100mbit driver which can be found in
various collections like the Sioux one mentioned by Fabien.

I think you wrote me a tool called BERNDPCI or something, Eric? I never
got around to using it.
Anyway, PCISLEEP isn't as extended as PCIscan listed at
http://www.nu2.nu/utils/#pciscan
Nor does it support the huge PCI textfile database at
http://members.datafast.net.au/dft0802/downloads.htm

Current FreeDOS setup batchfiles by Blair for loading correct packet
driver are a lot of lines of:
"rem PCI card with PCI DEVICE ID 12:34, load XYZ.COM"
"if [PCI-ID] == [12:34] then load packet driver XYZ.COM"

Post by Eric Auer
As Fabien said, the settings for your home LAN go into wattcp.cfg,
but you can often get things working with a very simple wattcp.cfg
which only says "use DHCP", more or less. There are explanations
about which variables can be set and to which values inside the
default wattcp.cfg file :-).

DHCP is a nightmare under DOS somehow, many complaints arrived as
FreeDOS installation used this by default and then appears to hang.
No idea why a simple ADSL-router wont cooperate with this DHCP thing.

Post by Eric Auer

Post by Simon Townsend
I don't want to have to reinstall Freedos just for the new hardware.

You'd never need to reinstall FreeDOS. You can just place driver files
anywhere you like, then make a reference to them in config.sys or
autoexec.bat

Post by Eric Auer
relevant settings to your FreeDOS box :-). If you cannot
find config in files, you can still do "mem /d /p" or use
similar tools to find out which drivers got loaded :-).

"MEM /C /N" I've always preferred :)

[Simon Townsend]

Thank you for all that Fabien and Eric. The two responses seem to have got me working ok. The packet driver exists in the \crynwr directory I discovered after downloading it.
Your help is fantastic!

Simon



----- Original Message ----

From: Fabien Meghazi <***@amigrave.com>

To: freedos-***@lists.sourceforge.net

Sent: Tuesday, 22 January, 2008 12:42:05 PM

Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Ethernet card - how to install in Freedos

Is there a way of finding out what it is from within FREEDOS, which dos
drivers I will need and how to install it and get it working form my home

First step :

*************



Find a packet driver for your network card.

It should be a simple .exe or .com.

In order to find the good one, you should know what chip your card is built on.

If it's a realtek, just have a look at the bigger chip on the card,

you should see a name

such as RTLXXXX



If it's a 10T, it's most probably a RTL8029 (should be ne2000 compatible too)

if it's a 10/100 it's most probably a RTL8139



Have a look at this page, hopefully you will find the good driver for your card.

http://www.georgpotthast.de/sioux/packet.htm



When running a packet driver, you have to specify some parameters

(Hardware address, irq, ...) (check yourpacketdriver.exe /? for help)

I have a rtl8139 and I run the packet driver like this :



rtl8139.exe 0x7e



Normaly, by just running the packet driver, I think you are already

good to run network games, eg: duke nukem. (not 100% sure about this)





Second step :

****************



Install wattcp

If you have the freedos cdrom in drive D: then search for the folder

where the wattcp package is hold.

(I don't remember exactly but I think it should be :

d:\freedos\packages\net\wat?????.zip or something like this)

Once the good file is located, you can install it by using fdpkg



fdpkg /install wat?????.zip



Third step :

*************



Configure your c:\fdos\wattcp.cfg file (if not already done by

installer) depending on your home network configuration.





Four step :

*************



Install some programs to check if you can use your network.

Find arachne (a web browser for dos). It is located on the cdrom too.



cdd d:\freedos\packages\net\

fdpkg /install arachne??.zip



Then launch arachne, answer to the config questions, type

www.gooogle.com in the address bar and cross your fingers.
--
Fabien Meghazi



Website: http://www.amigrave.com

Email: ***@amigrave.com

IM: ***@gmail.com



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