Actually there's no need because mine crashes with winpkt loaded as well, I believe. I'll test to make sure when I get home.

ThenZero wrote on 2022-05-27, 13:07:

I assumed it loaded as a tsr when you run dhcp... Is that incorrect?

The mTCP DHCP client doesn't stay resident.

Grzyb wrote on 2022-05-27, 13:15:

ThenZero wrote on 2022-05-27, 13:07:

I assumed it loaded as a tsr when you run dhcp... Is that incorrect?

The mTCP DHCP client doesn't stay resident.

Oh ok. Well that makes the crash even stranger to me because it only happens when I run that before I launch windows. Maybe it activates the packet driver or the card in some way?

If you suspect there's something wrong with the packet driver, you can try replacing it with the ODI driver + ODIPKT.

But the problem may be somewhere else...
You mentioned you're using XTIDE - but why? XTIDE doesn't make sense in 286+...
It would be a good idea to try with a regular 16-bit IDE card.

And another thing: in EZSETUP, there's the "Add Wait States" option - in my 486 the card works fine without wait states, but in some other machines they may be necessary...

Grzyb wrote on 2022-05-27, 13:46:

If you suspect there's something wrong with the packet driver, you can try replacing it with the ODI driver + ODIPKT. […]
Show full quote

If you suspect there's something wrong with the packet driver, you can try replacing it with the ODI driver + ODIPKT.

But the problem may be somewhere else...
You mentioned you're using XTIDE - but why? XTIDE doesn't make sense in 286+...
It would be a good idea to try with a regular 16-bit IDE card.

And another thing: in EZSETUP, there's the "Add Wait States" option - in my 486 the card works fine without wait states, but in some other machines they may be necessary...

Ok I'll give that a try. I had a heck of a time getting ide to work in this machine, I'm using the xtide card because it works.

Edit: I should say, I had a hard time getting SD cards, cf cards, etc to work on ide in this machine. The old spinning rust drive worked fine, cd drive works fine. I can link you to the threads if you're interested in the saga but basically someone suggested I try the xtide card and that works great and seems to be really fast. It's also very configurable which should in theory be avoiding any resource conflicts... Lol

I've had the best results overall with Trumpet 2.1F

The packet driver is a TSR - when you load it, it stays running. Many of the Crynwr derived ones can be unloaded with the -u option.

mTCP programs do a "handshake" with the packet driver when they load, and they "un-handshake" when they exit. Assuming the programs start and stop fully, the packet driver will be in memory but nothing will be talking to it or using it. The packet driver will happily continue to process incoming packets, and throw them on the floor because there is nothing to do.

mTCP programs protect themselves against early exit by installing Ctrl-Break handlers. Even the simplest programs have to do it. Otherwise, if you were exit the program early the "un-handshake" with the packet driver would get skipped. And then the packet driver would be calling into a memory location trying to deliver new packets, with probably garbage in memory to respond to the call. In industry we call that the beginning of a bad time ...

If you are loading the packet driver, running DHCP, and everything is normal, then the packet driver and mTCP are probably not your problems.

Another option if you're only interested in TCP/IP networking under windows may be the 32bit Novell stack (requires a 386 or better of course). I've confirmed it works with regular Windows 3.1 as well as Windows for Workgroups 3.11. None of the NetWare client bits are required. I've quickly thrown together this zip file (built from Client32 v2.71 from 18 February 1999) which should be the bare minimum required to make TCP/IP (and optionally IPX) work:

It requires HIMEM.SYS and will load high automatically if EMM386 is loaded, otherwise including LAN driver it will require around 2KB of conventional memory. The zip file includes a driver (PCNTNW.LAN) for AMD PCnet cards which should be suitable for trying it out in, eg, VirtualBox. For anything else you'll need a suitable 32bit ODI driver (.LAN or .NLM) - for SMC cards you can grab this from ether.exe in the Client32 directory: ether.exe\CLIENT32\SMC8000.LAN.

To make it work copy everything to somewhere like C:\NIOS and add that to the path (so that windows can find the .DLL and .DRV files), then edit C:\NIOS\STARTNET.BAT and either uncomment the AMD PCnet driver or replace it with your own. For an SMC card it will probably be something like load SMC8000.LAN FRAME=ETHERNET_II. If you want IPX support for DOS games you can also uncomment that. No windows configuration is required for anything - I tested it with Netscape 2.01 and it just worked as long as the DLL and DRV files were in the path.

For other cards the full Client32 install package (v2.71 here) includes a pile of 32bit ODI drivers. You'd also need this package if you wanted to connect to a NetWare, Mars NWE or Microsoft Services for NetWare server for network drives and printing.

Very few free DOS apps support the Novell TCP/IP stack probably because the SDK wasn't freely available until the early 2000s (and has a surely GPL-incompatible license) - pretty much the only stuff is a SNTPC client, a weird FTP client and a remote control app. So if support for DOS TCP/IP apps is important you're really better off using a packet driver (or a shim) - then you can use mTCP and most other DOS things.

For Windows for Workgroups v3.11 the best choice is probably an NDIS driver and Microsofts own 32bit TCP/IP stack as the Novell one comes with no utilities besides ping.

After further experimentation it seems that just running the packet driver and then windows is enough to lock the system up. This occurs with both pkt8000 and smc8000 (odi driver).

I can use them in dos as long as I want with no hang but as soon as I start windows the system hangs after about thirty seconds. Again this is with no networking anything in windows.

I've replaced Trumpet with that Novell's stack - this also works fine, FTP download to HDD speed is 141 KB/s.
Far from what mTCP offers (>300 KB/s), but much faster than Trumpet.

So at this point we know the drivers are correct for the SMC UltraChip 83C790QF and that the DOS drivers (packet, 16bit ODI, 32bit ODI) have no compatibility issues on their own with Windows 3.x. And the card itself is also fine given it works from DOS.

I guess the problem must be either some other software (including Option ROMs like the XT-IDE) running on the system, or some compatibility issue with some other hardware in the system. If it was me I'd strip the machine back to bare minimum and test again. Minimum hardware (VGA, regular IDE controller, NIC, minimum RAM), minimum software (blank disk with only MS-DOS 6.22, Windows 3.1 and the network driver), etc. If the network setup is reliable on the minimum system then I'd add back hardware and software one at a time testing after each to try and identify which hardware/software was causing the problem. If the network setup isn't reliable on the bare minimum setup then I'd probably just give up on using this particular card in in this particular machine and try a different card.

thanks, sounds like a good plan.

One other thought ... Does the software interrupt matter? I've been using 0x7e... What did you use?

ThenZero wrote on 2022-05-31, 03:52:

One other thought ... Does the software interrupt matter? I've been using 0x7e... What did you use?

Normally, I use 0x60.
The only exception is when a TIGA graphics card is installed, as the TIGACD driver may also use 0x60.

I tried again to get the SB card working in WFW3.11 along with the network card (I took out the XTIDE card temporarily to reduce variables).

I cannot for the life of me figure out why it's not working. It works in DOS just fine. The DIAGNOSE program finds the card. The CTCU program shows no resource conflicts. I installed the latest drivers from Creative that someone linked and those seemed to install fine, asked me where my Windows directory was etc, but it's like Windows just has no idea the driver was installed. Doesn't show in the control panel, sounds are grayed out. I tried adding "Wave=sb16snd.drv" to the SYSTEM.INI and that did make the driver show up in the control panel, but still no sound. What am I missing??

Feels like this is probably wrong but I haven't the faintest clue how to fix it. Does anyone have an example of what this is supposed to look like?

ThenZero wrote on 2022-06-03, 03:24:

Feels like this is probably wrong but I haven't the faintest clue how to fix it. Does anyone have an example of what this is supposed to look like?

I've attached the win.ini and system.ini files from This Computer. The sound setup is a bit odd as the machine has both a Gravis UltraSound and a SoundBlaster CT2810. Sound works fine for both sound cards from both DOS and Windows. Networking is also fine from both DOS and Windows using the 32bit Novell network stack though I rarely use TCP/IP on there - the network stack is primarily to give me network drives (far more convenient than FTP IMO). I'm using a 3Com 3C509 NIC but that shouldn't really matter as the driver is running in protected mode with the rest of network stack rather than as a TSR under DOS.

I'm not sure what version of the Creative drivers I'm using - pretty sure its from disk images I took from real disks years ago. I do know I installed them after installing the UltraSound drivers.

The most up to date creative DOS drivers for the ISA soundblasters do not include win 3.x drivers, better to use an older set of disk images

maxtherabbit wrote on 2022-06-03, 14:17:

The most up to date creative DOS drivers for the ISA soundblasters do not include win 3.x drivers, better to use an older set of disk images

Well thats a pain!

I went back and had a look at my collection of disk images but it looks like I've got images for potentially a couple of different sets of disks all in one folder with unhelpful filenames and no comments. I think I'll have to dig the originals out sometime and re-image them all properly.

So I've pulled the driver folder off of my NetWare server and attached that as it should be the version of the Creative drivers I installed on my 486. Its probably not the ideal version of the drivers to use but it might do for now.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2022-06-03, 14:17:

The most up to date creative DOS drivers for the ISA soundblasters do not include win 3.x drivers, better to use an older set of disk images

Just to make sure I understand this correctly.. you're saying that the drivers on the creative site that say they are for win 3.1x and DOS are actually only for DOS?

Edit: After having installed Dave's vibra16 drivers, I can say that the creative ones did seem to install some windows stuff (the basic sb16snd.drv or whatever), but not nearly as much as these did!