I used an Eiger PC LAN card a.k.a. EPX10BT (has some Fujitsu chipset in it) under WfWG. It also has DOS, OS/2, Novell, Win95, WinNT drivers (IIRC it even worked under Win2K)

Be sure to get the matching dongle.

Xircom REM56 has drivers for it

Xircom has worked for me, but they are a major PITA to configure if your video chip uses the same memory area. I had to edit a config file to exclude the video range.

Holy necro, but I bought an Eiger EPX10BT and I can't get it to work. Bakemono or anyone else, do you have one of these currently running with a config.sys, protocol.ini .etc and some tips or configuration instructions you can share? I'm not sure what's going on. Eiger seems to have two sets of drivers, one from 1995 and one from 1997, with very different installations.

I know I had a batch file that executed DOSENAB, which would detect the card, and then it would execute NET START, and then start Windows. Can't remember if there was more to it than that.

Hi Techweenie,
I know this is really old but actually I try the same, to go online with an old Notebook (Targa, 486 DX2/66, 4 MB-Ram, 2 type 2 PCMCIA) with an PCMCIA Xircom Creditcard Network Card. I have the same problem like you, the driver will not find free memory and can't be loaded.

"a free memory segment could not be found"

I think it is the same problem you described, maybe it uses the same memory area like the video chip. I can change the memory block in the protocol.ini of windows 311, but I get always the same error, I don't find a free area.

Do you know how to solve it, e.g. how to exclude a memory area and how I can find out what area my grafic chip is using?

Thank you in advanced.

techweenie wrote on 2018-05-23, 04:48:

Xircom has worked for me, but they are a major PITA to configure if your video chip uses the same memory area. I had to edit a config file to exclude the video range.

thafaker wrote on 2020-09-02, 14:49:

Hi Techweenie, I know this is really old but actually I try the same, to go online with an old Notebook (Targa, 486 DX2/66, 4 MB […]
Show full quote

Hi Techweenie,
I know this is really old but actually I try the same, to go online with an old Notebook (Targa, 486 DX2/66, 4 MB-Ram, 2 type 2 PCMCIA) with an PCMCIA Xircom Creditcard Network Card. I have the same problem like you, the driver will not find free memory and can't be loaded.

"a free memory segment could not be found"

I think it is the same problem you described, maybe it uses the same memory area like the video chip. I can change the memory block in the protocol.ini of windows 311, but I get always the same error, I don't find a free area.

Do you know how to solve it, e.g. how to exclude a memory area and how I can find out what area my grafic chip is using?

Thank you in advanced.

I believe MSD displays the memory map and which areas are used by ROMs. If you read through the Xircom documentation it shows you how to exclude memory ranges. That's what I did. Sometimes you can change video ROM address ranges in the BIOS.

techweenie wrote on 2020-09-02, 14:54:

I believe MSD displays the memory map and which areas are used by ROMs. If you read through the Xircom documentation it shows you how to exclude memory ranges. That's what I did. Sometimes you can change video ROM address ranges in the BIOS.

Thank you for your quick reply and the tip with msd, that helped to find out the range of my vga. I read the whole documentation from xircom, but I cannot find something to exclude a range. I only find the config to select a specific point with "mem=0xD000" or something like that. But that doesnt work.

Any suggestion?

Thank you,
Jan

thafaker wrote on 2020-09-02, 15:50:

Thank you for your quick reply and the tip with msd, that helped to find out the range of my vga. I read the whole documentation […]
Show full quote

techweenie wrote on 2020-09-02, 14:54:

I believe MSD displays the memory map and which areas are used by ROMs. If you read through the Xircom documentation it shows you how to exclude memory ranges. That's what I did. Sometimes you can change video ROM address ranges in the BIOS.

Thank you for your quick reply and the tip with msd, that helped to find out the range of my vga. I read the whole documentation from xircom, but I cannot find something to exclude a range. I only find the config to select a specific point with "mem=0xD000" or something like that. But that doesnt work.

Any suggestion?

Thank you,
Jan

Defining the memory range like you found might be what I did. It's been a long time so I don't fully remember all the steps, but it did work. You have to make sure there's enough free space in the range you select. If you can't find enough free space you'll have to start disabling things.

Here's where I get to contradict two people in one post. I personally had the Eiger 10BT card, but never got it to work under Windows 3.11. Gave up after way too much time spent on it. On the other hand, I have a Xircom CE-II-PS and I'm really happy with it. It comes with NDIS3 drivers, a graphical installer... and it works pretty much out of the box. The DOS packet drivers were equally easy. Just launch the packet driver loader, that's it!

Early PCMCIA implementations varied, and getting PCMCIA anything working on DOS or 3.1 can be fussy. Windows 95 had its own built-in card services that mostly worked automagically, whereas earlier systems relied on a combination of PCMCIA card services suites and PCMCIA hardware providing its own bare iron drivers for the various PCMCIA controllers. I've never been able to get 16-bit card services to actually work with a card -- it requires lots of manual configuration for each card, and uses lots of conventional RAM.

The network drivers, as others have said, will still require you allot them a free upper memory space. Chances are good the default WILL conflict with something and the driver will just freeze instead of gracefully reporting the conflict. And yes, MSD is your friend. Can't do PCMCIA 16-bit without a memory snoop utility.

I'm guessing many early PCMCIA adopters just called tech support and had them guide them through every step.

thafaker wrote on 2020-09-02, 15:50:

Thank you for your quick reply and the tip with msd, that helped to find out the range of my vga. I read the whole documentation […]
Show full quote

techweenie wrote on 2020-09-02, 14:54:

I believe MSD displays the memory map and which areas are used by ROMs. If you read through the Xircom documentation it shows you how to exclude memory ranges. That's what I did. Sometimes you can change video ROM address ranges in the BIOS.

Thank you for your quick reply and the tip with msd, that helped to find out the range of my vga. I read the whole documentation from xircom, but I cannot find something to exclude a range. I only find the config to select a specific point with "mem=0xD000" or something like that. But that doesnt work.

Any suggestion?

Thank you,
Jan

I think you exclude the offending range so to speak by giving it a mem= range that doesn't stomp on your VGA BIOS or anything else. You will probably also have to do an emm386 exclusion. I think you can also do a system.ini [386enh] section exclusion too.

Hey Radiounix,
thanks for your reply. I am not able to get it work. I just formatted the old 210 MB Drive and reinstalled DOS 6.22 and Win 3.11 and tried it again. But I always get the same error. In the protocol.ini where the settings of the driver are adjusted, you can give him an IRQ, the memory (but not a range) and a few other things. Normally, the driver will do its work automatically. But when I do this, he is reporting "a free memory segment could not be found" and when I try to give him the mem by hand, he is telling me there is no free space, but in msd it is marked as free. I dont know what to do here.

I just spent too much time.

Thank you for your replys,
Jan

radiounix wrote on 2020-09-03, 01:10:

thafaker wrote on 2020-09-02, 15:50:

Thank you for your quick reply and the tip with msd, that helped to find out the range of my vga. I read the whole documentation […]
Show full quote

techweenie wrote on 2020-09-02, 14:54:

I believe MSD displays the memory map and which areas are used by ROMs. If you read through the Xircom documentation it shows you how to exclude memory ranges. That's what I did. Sometimes you can change video ROM address ranges in the BIOS.

Thank you for your quick reply and the tip with msd, that helped to find out the range of my vga. I read the whole documentation from xircom, but I cannot find something to exclude a range. I only find the config to select a specific point with "mem=0xD000" or something like that. But that doesnt work.

Any suggestion?

Thank you,
Jan

I think you exclude the offending range so to speak by giving it a mem= range that doesn't stomp on your VGA BIOS or anything else. You will probably also have to do an emm386 exclusion. I think you can also do a system.ini [386enh] section exclusion too.

I never managed to get it work on that 486. But with another old Notebook it worked like charme and the driver for the Xircom installed automatically within Dos 6.22 and I can use Win3.11 with Networking. Pretty cool to email within Eudora or Pegasus Mail and do FTP to transfer files.

Sincerely,
Jan

thafaker wrote on 2020-09-03, 05:40:

Hey Radiounix, thanks for your reply. I am not able to get it work. I just formatted the old 210 MB Drive and reinstalled DOS 6. […]
Show full quote

Hey Radiounix,
thanks for your reply. I am not able to get it work. I just formatted the old 210 MB Drive and reinstalled DOS 6.22 and Win 3.11 and tried it again. But I always get the same error. In the protocol.ini where the settings of the driver are adjusted, you can give him an IRQ, the memory (but not a range) and a few other things. Normally, the driver will do its work automatically. But when I do this, he is reporting "a free memory segment could not be found" and when I try to give him the mem by hand, he is telling me there is no free space, but in msd it is marked as free. I dont know what to do here.

I just spent too much time.

Thank you for your replys,
Jan

radiounix wrote on 2020-09-03, 01:10:

thafaker wrote on 2020-09-02, 15:50:

Thank you for your quick reply and the tip with msd, that helped to find out the range of my vga. I read the whole documentation […]
Show full quote

Thank you for your quick reply and the tip with msd, that helped to find out the range of my vga. I read the whole documentation from xircom, but I cannot find something to exclude a range. I only find the config to select a specific point with "mem=0xD000" or something like that. But that doesnt work.

Any suggestion?

Thank you,
Jan

I think you exclude the offending range so to speak by giving it a mem= range that doesn't stomp on your VGA BIOS or anything else. You will probably also have to do an emm386 exclusion. I think you can also do a system.ini [386enh] section exclusion too.