When you say upper memory, what exactly do you mean? The space above 640K and below 1MB, or the 64K space above 1MB?

mTCP doesn't really care about upper memory; it provides the buffers that the packet driver is going to use from the space allocated for the application, which is in conventional memory. Below 1MB nothing (mTCP or the packet driver) should have a problem. Using the 64KB above 1MB might be a problem if something isn't handling the segmented pointers correct, but mTCP doesn't hand out addresses up there so it's probably not on the mTCP side.

(mTCP uses a software interrupt to communicate with the packet driver and provides pointers to buffers for the packet drive to use. mTCP will scan for a magic string in the packet driver area, so if DHCP started running and was waiting for a DHCP acknowledgement then it found the packet driver. But otherwise, it will never touch memory that the mTCP application itself didn't allocate, and that's always below 1MB.)

By upper memory i mean the A0000h up to FFFFFh, exactly between 640kb and 1MB.

I assumed that when loading the packet driver with LOADHIGH it will only try to load on UMA and not on HMA, but correct me if i'm wrong to assume that. I can also check where in memory tha packet driver goes.

Yeah its strange but if i load the driver with LH the driver loads fine but then when i start DHCP there's nothing but timeouts. If i load the packet driver low it always works. I don't think this might be a problem with MTCP but rather with the packet driver.

The packet driver seems to be pretty generic, made to work with several Intel network chipsets that went into the PRO/1000 line of cards.

The driver can probably be improved a lot and the
ASM source code comes in the ZIP archive , so if you think there's something funky going on there it might be worth to take a look. The author even mentions that changing some buffer values might increase performance but since the values are hard coded one needs to change in the source and then recompile. It would be much better the driver would search the values on a CFG file or such but the author didn't bother.

I can't live without MTCP now, so i don't mind loading the packet driver low for my networking needs. And i'm happy with the speed improvement.

Thank you for jumping in!

jwt27 wrote on 2014-11-19, 23:25:

Good idea! I have a small stack of network cards, but never tried anything else than Realtek cards in DOS. They "just work" but I have no idea how these compare to other cards.
We could make a "benchmark" list or something with transfer speed and memory requirements of each card!

Do all Realtek cards work? I am thinking to build a 98SE/2k/XP machine on Core2Duo G33/G41.

If onboard RTL8111 works I'll be very happy (as that card is also compatible with other OS's I like to play with like AROS [Amiga-like] and OSX)
If not, PCI RTL8111 would still be my preference but failing that RTL8029/8139 would still probably fulfill all my requirements, just slower!

Methanoid wrote on 2020-12-01, 09:09:

Do all Realtek cards work? I am thinking to build a 98SE/2k/XP machine on Core2Duo G33/G41. […]
Show full quote

jwt27 wrote on 2014-11-19, 23:25:

Good idea! I have a small stack of network cards, but never tried anything else than Realtek cards in DOS. They "just work" but I have no idea how these compare to other cards.
We could make a "benchmark" list or something with transfer speed and memory requirements of each card!

Do all Realtek cards work? I am thinking to build a 98SE/2k/XP machine on Core2Duo G33/G41.

If onboard RTL8111 works I'll be very happy (as that card is also compatible with other OS's I like to play with like AROS [Amiga-like] and OSX)
If not, PCI RTL8111 would still be my preference but failing that RTL8029/8139 would still probably fulfill all my requirements, just slower!

RTL8111 looks to have XP drivers but nothing for 98/2k
https://www.realtek.com/en/component/zoo/cate … xpress-software

I use Digital 21143-PC based (DE500-BA) network cards on many of my elderly systems and recently got one working on a WFW 3.11 system. In general they "just work" and the only system I recall being tricky is the original NT 3.10 from 1993.

I have had most of my cards since the 1990s when they were new, but just found one on eBay.

Never had problems with cheap RTL8029AS based PCI cards.

Started with two of those in crosslink to do win98 Internet Connection Sharing........ a 56kbps dial-up line with my older brother. 😮

PD2JK wrote on 2020-12-01, 13:50:

Never had problems with cheap RTL8029AS based PCI cards.

Started with two of those in crosslink to do win98 Internet Connection Sharing........ a 56kbps dial-up line with my older brother. 😮

Thanks... I am HOPING I can use the onboard Realtek 8111/8168 on whatever board I buy/borrow

chinny22 wrote on 2020-12-01, 13:05:

Methanoid wrote on 2020-12-01, 09:09:

Do all Realtek cards work? I am thinking to build a 98SE/2k/XP machine on Core2Duo G33/G41. […]
Show full quote

jwt27 wrote on 2014-11-19, 23:25:

Good idea! I have a small stack of network cards, but never tried anything else than Realtek cards in DOS. They "just work" but I have no idea how these compare to other cards.
We could make a "benchmark" list or something with transfer speed and memory requirements of each card!

Do all Realtek cards work? I am thinking to build a 98SE/2k/XP machine on Core2Duo G33/G41.

If onboard RTL8111 works I'll be very happy (as that card is also compatible with other OS's I like to play with like AROS [Amiga-like] and OSX)
If not, PCI RTL8111 would still be my preference but failing that RTL8029/8139 would still probably fulfill all my requirements, just slower!

RTL8111 looks to have XP drivers but nothing for 98/2k
https://www.realtek.com/en/component/zoo/cate … xpress-software

https://www.techspot.com/drivers/driver/file/ … formation/7856/ ??

Can anyone recommend a Fast Ethernet card that is supported by NT4 Alpha?

My AlphaStation 255 only has a 10MBit NIC onboard and I always wanted to upgrade. (Of course I would also take a Gigabit NIC, but I don't think that there are any with Alpha drivers...)

+1 for roughly pre-2000 Intel cards, broad built in windows as well as DOS support
As always, "The best" is pretty subjective and depends on your needs. Not all cards will allow you to PXE boot for example.

Beluga wrote on 2020-12-01, 17:03:

Can anyone recommend a Fast Ethernet card that is supported by NT4 Alpha?

My AlphaStation 255 only has a 10MBit NIC onboard and I always wanted to upgrade. (Of course I would also take a Gigabit NIC, but I don't think that there are any with Alpha drivers...)

I just looked at my NT4 CD, and it appears to have DC21x40 drivers in the Alpha directory. Who knows if you can get 10/100 speeds with those drivers, but the DC21140 does support 10/100 connections on a PCI card.

I have a D-Link DFE-500TX PCI network card with the DC21140 chip that I use with NT 3.1 (an x86 system in my case).

UPDATE: I just reviewed the NT4 HCL on the disk, and the HCL lists the DEC DE500 Fast Ethernet Adapter as Alpha NT compatible. That card uses the DC21140 chip. You might have some options.

Good luck!

Thanks for pointing that out! The DEC DE500 seems to be a bit more on the expensive side, but I was able to buy a DFE-500TX for less than five bucks shipped on eBay. Now I am really curious if it will work 😀

Beluga wrote on 2020-12-02, 01:47:

Thanks for pointing that out! The DEC DE500 seems to be a bit more on the expensive side, but I was able to buy a DFE-500TX for less than five bucks shipped on eBay. Now I am really curious if it will work 😀

You'll have to let us know if and how it works with the Alpha.