Okay, I removed “SET C:\” from the line entry in auto exec.bat and it is working now.
I am using the sample config file from mTCP package.
I have the 3c509 configured for Full-duplex, Twisted pair, DOS.
I have a problem however. When I try to run the SPDtest.exe program from mTCP package I get an error.

“Socket open fail”

I am using the command like
# spdtest -target 10.0.0.1 80 -send -mb 10

What is a good tool and command for testing the file transfer rate of the NIC card ?

Spdtest requires two machines to operate. What commands are you running on the other machine? (The error message indicates that you can't connect to the other machine.)

I would like to add some more TCP/IP tools to this mTCP suite of tools.
I would like traceroute, nslookup, etc.
I tried the MS-Win3x TCP/IP ( TCPIP32b ) package but the binaries do not work in DOS.

Where can I get some more TCP/IP tools ?

Also, what is a good way to test the packet send/receive performance in DOS ?

I'm not aware of other tools that use the same libraries as mtcp. There are other utilities available using WATTCP and such, but I'm not aware of traceroute, nslookup, host, or dig being ported to DOS.
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/fre … /group-net.html

There is a gpl version of mTCP on github so no reason some one can't make other tools available.

Thats a different project. Michael makes the source avaible for mTCP on his webiste if you need it.

> Performance difference between ISA NICs?

I can report about 40kB/s with HP 27245 card (ISA-8 UTP Ethernet) in a genuine 4.77MHz IBM XT, using DOS TCP/IP driver. At least the MFM HDD wasn't overwhelmed... BTW, that's one highly cultured card: just a single rotary switch for ADDR with selectable values printed on the back, no jumpers to lose or bend pins! BR: Tamas Feher

Any updates on the original topic?

Iirc tcp offloading was popular in pci times most for server based cards.

Iirc 2nd: no 3com 905b offers dma. You just choose the address plus irq and that’s it. Under w95 IRQ it’s not even configurable. At least when you choose the Isa driver instead of Pnp driver.

On a 386sx I benchmarked the 905b and it was faster that its intel counterparts by quite an amount. Even when enabling rxearly or 32bitIO (which might be contra productive on a sx)

Back in 1990’s I worked at Computer Education centers.
We had classrooms full of 30 computers each.
Every week we would have to reinstall the computers with a fresh install of Microsoft Windows and programs
For what ever class they were teaching.

We had setup a Network server running WinNT 4.0 to push out all the Hard drive disk images of the
The course they would be teaching.

The computers we used were

Pentium 90 and 100mhz
16mb and 32mb of RAM
250mb IDE hard drives

So over the Network we would install all the computers.
We would install 3 classrooms at a time ( 90 computers )
It would take about 5 minutes to install 30 computers
About 10 minutes to install 90 computers.

These were HP computers that used HP ISA network cards. I think they used AMD chipset.
But we also used the 3com 3c509
And Novell NE2000 certified NICs

We never had any problems and all the computers would install just fine.
We used Ethernet cat 5 cables and 10base-T networking.

We used Novell IP/SPX protocol to push out the hard drive images because it had faster transfer speeds
And was lighter on the network.

But once we had the computers installed with Microsoft Windows they used TCP/IP Networking Protocol
Actually they used IPX/IP too because it was a Networking class.

So we never had any problems with 10base-T Ethernet ISA cards.
We use to push these computers to the limit every day of the week.

We also had IBM computers and used Novell Netware and x86 UNIX too.
All it took was 3-Clicks of the mouse to install 30 computers.
To install 3 classrooms full of computers ( 90 computers ) would take 9-clicks of the mouse.