Mail Archives: opendos/1998/05/23/07:53:32
Andrew Jardine wrote
>marraige of '95 and drdos networking stuff is possible?
>
Yes, with some efforts.
I succeeded in making them marry either using w95A (fat16) or w95B (fat32).
I found help visiting Novell WWW and FTP sites. I don't remember the exact
address, now, but all the stuff about PNW was under a directory named
"desktop".
There, you can find several technical sheets about configuring PNW and some
about w95.
There is also a utility that extracts the files of Personal Netware from
the whole distribution.
I remember I had to shuffle a little the disks because in Caldera's
distribution they are 5 while in Novell's they were 6 (or 4?). Anyway, I
restored the 3 disks of PNW.
Important! You have to modify the ascii file C:\MSDOS.SYS to read
"BOOTGUI=0", so that w95 will stop after running AUTOEXEC.BAT (and
STARTNET.BAT).
You'll have to start w95 by hand (old-style), issuing "WIN" till you
restore "BOOTGUI=1".
The installation has to be divided in 2 steps: first, install the software
at the DOS level and be sure it works, then (and that's the reason of the
change in MSDOS.SYS) try (!) to make w95 agrees to work with PNW.
The first step, using OpenDOS, is quite easy because INSTALL detects w95
and doesn't install windows files.
When I installed on a fat16, I hadn't still tried the utility to split PNW
from OpenDOS.
I had to, when I wanted to install PNW on a machine with fat32, where I
couldn't use OpenDOS.
Everything went OK!
The only problem was the lack of SHARE.EXE in (my) w95B, but using the one
from w95A (and SETVER) worked. (OpenDOS' SHARE.EXE works only with OD, why?).
When PNW works, make a copy of AUTOEXEC, STARTNET and NET.CFG, to be safe,
and be prepared to the Big Fight!
Disable the line that starts STARTNET in AUTOEXEC to run w95 without PNW to
make you sure that no protocols or net clients are bound to the network card.
Maybe, you have to change the driver using a default (i.e. NE2000) either
from PNW or from w95, or even the card itself, as I did (I could because we
have several laboratories in our school!).
Re-enable STARTNET, reboot and run w95 having handy a copy of w95 cd.
From control panel you have to: Add / Client / Novell / Novell 4.0 (VLM).
If w95 says it couldn't find a component, using "Details" and switching to
"Explore", you can pick the software it's looking for and put where it
wants it (usually "\windows\system").
This may be quite long, but don't be discouraged: keep in mind that "you'll
WIN!!!" ;-D
Replay NO when you're asked to reboot and review all the changes it has
made to AUTOEXEC, STARTNET and NET.CFG.
You have to decide to keep the changes of restore from the copies you made.
ALso, you have to change/add some lines in section [386enh] of SYSTEM.INI:
TimerCriticalSection=500
ReflectDosInt=true
Now you can exit and reboot.
It is useful if "C:\NWCLIENT" preceeds "C:\WINDOWS" in PATH.
Execute AUTOEXEC and STARTNET one line at a time to see every output.
Now, from the C: prompt, you're ready to issue "win" and cross your fingers.
Be sure it won't work at the first try and maybe neither at the tenth (or
95th?) but it will.
When it works, you can restore BOOTGUI=1 in MSDOS.SYS.
NETW and NETDIAGS work fine. To manage print queues you have to run the dos
version of NET.
Now these two machines (fat16 and fat32) are integrated in our school lan
with other pc's running OpenDOS plus win31 and can share use resources.
I'll accept any suggestions, too.
That's all! (by now)
Gian Carlo Stagni (technical staff)
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