OK, no specific experiences with that, as I find the NDIS drivers clumsy and bloated. But I do have an alternative for you then: try packet drivers and mTCP.
Packet drivers are on the same disk you refer to, iirc they're called 3c90XPD.COM.
To use:
- REM out all references to NDIS drivers or MS network client in config.sys and autoexec.bat and reboot
- load the packet driver manually with 3C90XPD.COM 0x60
- if that works, you can add it to autoexec.bat. Be careful: some packet drivers really don't like being loaded high. No idea about this one, but worth bearing in mind.
- get the mTCP programs onto the computer (they fit on a floppy (image)). Read the documentation
- copy the SAMPLE.CFG file from the SAMPLES subdir in the mTCP to a sensible location (root C:\ is popular, but I just keep it in C:\NET\MTCP together with all the MTCP executables) and give it a good name like MTCP.CFG
- SAMPLE.CFG is good enough for testing out of the box, so just set the environment variable MTCPCFG to point to where you copied it, eg. SET MTCPCFG=C:\MTCP.CFG
- run DHCP.EXE. If the NIC has link to something with DHCP server, the packet driver works, the environment variable MTCPCFG is set, and its value points to a valid config file, you will now get an IP address. That means you're good to go.
If everything up to DHCP went well, you can try transferring stuff. mTCP includes FTP.EXE (client) and FTPSRV.EXE (server). Using the client is simpler, but for ease of use I prefer running the server on my old machines so I can use a nice big modern desktop client like Filezilla to select what I want to transfer. If you want to run FTPSRV for that, there are a few more settings in the mTCP config file, most importantly the one specifying where your password file is located - and then you need to copy the FTPPASS.TXT file from the SAMPLES subdir to where you want it, and then add at least one valid user to it.
