DOS network works without Packet Driver, but fails with the driver enabled \ VOGONS

DOS network works without Packet Driver, but fails with the driver enabled

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First post, by GunKneeNeon

Posted on 2023-11-23, 08:35

GunKneeNeon Offline

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I have a RTL8139D PCI card in my DOS pc and been trying to make it work for days. I installed the MS clint 3.0, the NIC driver, added TCP/IP protocol and added the packet driver line in autoexec.bat. It has the same issue as said in this post. At its best, the "Initializing TCP/IP via DHCP...." line hung for a while then proceed to the next line without threw an error. It got a IP from the DHCP server but could not ping any client or its gateway. It could only ping itself either by its LAN IP address or 127.0.0.1.

I've tried a lot of things: changing the PCI slot, the IRQ, the cable, the router, the packet driver version(v3.40 / v3.44) and even the card itself(I have another NIC which is also a RTL8139D but with different PCB).
I tried disabling all the unnecessary devices(sound card, serial/parallel ports etc.) to free up more IRQs.
I tried assigning an exclusive IRQ for it.
Lastly I tried changing the I/O number. It didn't work when the I/O number is legal.

BUT!!! When I assigned the number to 0x300 as he does. It worked! It could ping the router and every client. I could map a LAN share folder as D:\. But in this case, the packet driver doesn't get loaded at all. It says "Error: <packet_int_no> should be 0x60->0x66, 0x68->0x6f, or 0x78->0x7e. 0x67 is the EMS interrupt, and 0x70 through 0x77 are used by second 8259M". Then I commented out the driver loading line in autoexec.bat and reboot. The NIC still worked as a charm. Why is this? Can I use the network without loading the packet driver? What does the driver actually do when enabled? What is the benefit to having it than without it?

Constantly looking for the driver for Acer Magic v1 MPEG decoding card.

Reply 1 of 10, by Grzyb

Posted on 2023-11-23, 09:02

Grzyb Offline

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Microsoft Network Client uses NDIS drivers, not packet drivers.
And any attempts to simultaneously use two drivers for one device are sure to cause problems.

Żywotwór planetarny, jego gnijące błoto, jest świtem egzystencji, fazą wstępną, i wyłoni się z krwawych ciastomózgowych miedź miłująca...

Reply 2 of 10, by GunKneeNeon

Posted on 2023-11-23, 09:12

GunKneeNeon Offline

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Grzyb wrote on 2023-11-23, 09:02:

Microsoft Network Client uses NDIS drivers, not packet drivers.
And any attempts to simultaneously use two drivers for one device are sure to cause problems.

Actually I followed this video step-by-step. The guy in this video has the same card as I. He literally uses both drivers together.

Constantly looking for the driver for Acer Magic v1 MPEG decoding card.

Reply 3 of 10, by Grzyb

Posted on 2023-11-23, 09:58

Grzyb Offline

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The configuration in that video is incorrect.

Yes, sometimes it may seem to work - I guess it's the last loaded driver that gets to service hardware interrupts.
The first driver is PD, the second is NDIS - so, the NDIS driver does work, and so does Microsoft Network Client.
But try running some software using the PD (eg. mTCP) - I would expect failure...

Żywotwór planetarny, jego gnijące błoto, jest świtem egzystencji, fazą wstępną, i wyłoni się z krwawych ciastomózgowych miedź miłująca...

Reply 4 of 10, by maxtherabbit

Posted on 2023-11-23, 14:09

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Grzyb is correct, you cannot load a packet driver and NDIS driver. If you want to load the NDIS driver and use software which uses a packet driver, you can load what's called a packet driver shim known as "dis_pkt9"

Reply 5 of 10, by mbbrutman

Posted on 2023-11-23, 16:11

mbbrutman Offline

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You should read http://www.brutman.com/Dos_Networking/dos_networking.html. It explains what a packet driver does in detail.

In general two different programs or network stacks can't share an Ethernet card. Only one driver can service the interrupt from the card. And even the packet driver spec does not allow multiple programs to share the same packet driver.

Reply 6 of 10, by davidrg

Posted on 2023-11-23, 18:20

davidrg Offline

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In addition to running two NIC drivers at once not being allowed, I expect running two TCP/IP stacks at once isn't going to work terribly well either. If you've installed the MS Client with TCP/IP support I wouldn't expect both it and mTCP stuff to work even if you use the NDIS packet driver shim.

Reply 7 of 10, by GunKneeNeon

Posted on 2023-11-23, 18:41

GunKneeNeon Offline

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I'm kinda new to DOS networking and don't have much knowledge of it. I'm going to try different drivers with different network utilities anyway. Thanks guys! Learned a lot from you all!

Constantly looking for the driver for Acer Magic v1 MPEG decoding card.

Reply 8 of 10, by mbbrutman

Posted on 2023-11-23, 23:17

mbbrutman Offline

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davidrg wrote on 2023-11-23, 18:20:

In addition to running two NIC drivers at once not being allowed, I expect running two TCP/IP stacks at once isn't going to work terribly well either. If you've installed the MS Client with TCP/IP support I wouldn't expect both it and mTCP stuff to work even if you use the NDIS packet driver shim.

"There can only be one."

Reply 9 of 10, by Grzyb

Posted on 2023-11-23, 23:20

Grzyb Offline

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davidrg wrote on 2023-11-23, 18:20:

In addition to running two NIC drivers at once not being allowed, I expect running two TCP/IP stacks at once isn't going to work terribly well either. If you've installed the MS Client with TCP/IP support I wouldn't expect both it and mTCP stuff to work even if you use the NDIS packet driver shim.

I'm wondering if it's possible to use Microsoft Network Client (using IPX or NetBEUI), together with packet driver TCP/IP software (using NDIS to PD converter)...

Ages ago, I used to use Novell NetWare client together with CUTCP or WatTCP...
I don't remember details, but I think Novell was using IPX, and there was some ODI to PD converter.

Żywotwór planetarny, jego gnijące błoto, jest świtem egzystencji, fazą wstępną, i wyłoni się z krwawych ciastomózgowych miedź miłująca...

Reply 10 of 10, by davidrg

Posted on 2023-11-24, 07:45

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Grzyb wrote on 2023-11-23, 23:20:
I'm wondering if it's possible to use Microsoft Network Client (using IPX or NetBEUI), together with packet driver TCP/IP softwa […]
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davidrg wrote on 2023-11-23, 18:20:

In addition to running two NIC drivers at once not being allowed, I expect running two TCP/IP stacks at once isn't going to work terribly well either. If you've installed the MS Client with TCP/IP support I wouldn't expect both it and mTCP stuff to work even if you use the NDIS packet driver shim.

I'm wondering if it's possible to use Microsoft Network Client (using IPX or NetBEUI), together with packet driver TCP/IP software (using NDIS to PD converter)...

Ages ago, I used to use Novell NetWare client together with CUTCP or WatTCP...
I don't remember details, but I think Novell was using IPX, and there was some ODI to PD converter.

Yeah, NetWare under DOS and Win16 is almost exclusively over IPX (if we ignore NetWare/IP) and co-exists fine alongside SMB and other things as long as you don't install the Novell TCP/IP stack.

Only issue doing the same with the MS-NET client would be that any SMB server you'd want to connect to today probably only speaks TCP/IP. So having different startup options is probably the way to go - especially considering how memory hungry MS-NET is.

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