It has previously been rather difficult to use packet drivers if your PC is PROM booted from a network. The first good solution for Novell networks was described in the Wesleyan report. It was still rather complicated, though. Then I saw the appended message from John Mann. I have tried it and it is much easier. His fix, however, required a special version of each driver to be used for PROM boot (remote reset i Novell terminology). That's hard to maintain and would double the size of the packet driver distribution file. So I have turned his fix into an option at load time. Or rather TWO options. The n option converts between Ethernet type 8137 and Novell ISO-like packets. This is required if you use a standard boot PROM from the network card manufacturer and use the packet driver IPX from BYU. But as an added feature you can also use it to run packet drivers without ECONFIGing the Novell server, which is not always possible. The d option delays initialization and is the elegant solution to make PROM booting work. Because the initialization code must be kept after loading, the size of the packet driver will increase in this case. I have however enhanced Johns code by recognising that this code was at the end of TAIL.ASM, and by moving it to the beginning, I saved about 1 kbyte. Now the d option only increases the packet driver size by 1.5 kbyte. Typical AUTOEXEC.BAT for DOS 3.x and Novell Netware PROM boot: echo off prompt $p$g keybsv (or any other TSRs you need) wd8003e -d -n 0x7c 3 0x280 0xd000 ipx net3 rem < - - - - - - - - - - - this is a long line of spaces - - - - - - - > rem < - - - - - - - - - - - this is a long line of spaces - - - - - - - > f: login Also copy the above AUTOEXEC.BAT to the SYS:LOGIN directory. Thats all, folks. Enjoy! Jan Engvald, Lund University Computing Center ________________________________________________________________________ Address: Box 783 E-mail: xjeldc@ldc.lu.se S-220 07 LUND Earn/Bitnet: xjeldc@seldc52 SWEDEN (Span/Hepnet: Sweden::Gemini::xjeldc) Office: Soelvegatan 18 VAXPSI: psi%24020031020720::xjeldc Telephone: +46 46 107458 (X.400: C=se; A=TeDe; P=Sunet; O=lu; Telefax: +46 46 138225 OU=ldc; S=Engvald; G=Jan) Telex: 33533 LUNIVER S ============================================================================== From lth.se!sunic!mcsun!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!bruce!monu1! vaxc!johnm Mon Jun 11 17:03:26 MET DST 1990 In article <399@van-bc.UUCP>, skl@van-bc.UUCP (Samuel Lam) writes: > By now, thanks to Kelly MacDonald at BYU, we all know how to do > Ethernet II (Blue Book) Novell over a packet driver and make it > co-exist with a TCP/IP stack on top of the same packet driver... > > The question of the day now is: Does anyone have any insight > in doing the same with the ordinary 802.3 Novell, so that one > would not have to involve the Novell servers and other Novell > nodes on the network just to get TCP/IP and Novell to co-exist > on one Ethernet interface on a single PC? I've done it. I modified HEAD.ASM and TAIL.ASM from version 5 of the packet drivers and use an IPX linked against PDSHELL.OBJ. I also modified things so that the packet driver doesn't initialize the Ethernet card until you actually use the packet driver. This works well with the WD8003E driver, but with the NE1000/Tiara driver it doesn't show you the Ethernet address until you actually start using the packet driver. :-( We had to continue using 802.3 Novell because we needed student PCs to remote boot (from the Novell fileserver). In the AUTOEXEC.BAT just load the appropriate packet driver, IPX linked against PDSHELL, NET3, and do the rest of the things you normally do. No need to have a RAM disk taking up memory. In our AUTOEXEC.BAT we also have a program that looks at the signature in the Ethernet Boot ROM and decides which packet driver to load (with which IRQ etc.). This means we can have *one* boot image on the server for all types of cards, and we don't have classrooms full of PCs each reading BOOTCONF.SYS two bytes at a time ... but that's a different story. Please use this code, improve it (it's my only bit of 8*86 coding -- done without a manual), and share it around. John < Patches to HEAD.ASM and TAIL.ASM deleted > -- John Mann, Computer Centre, Monash University, Clayton VIC 3168, Australia Net: johnm@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au Ph: +61 3 565 4774 FAX: +61 3 565 4746