Message-Id: <199708150817.EAA11377@delorie.com>
From: Mark Stephens <cs208ms AT admin DOT nls DOT uk>
Subject: Personal Netware API
To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 97 9:17:09 BST
Mailer: Elm [revision: 66.25]
Precedence: bulk

Anyone know if the API for Personal Netware is freely available.
I think there is some PNW stuff in the Netware 4 SDK or something
but I don't really want to buy all that!

I noticed a lot of interest in OpenDOS TCP/IP connectivity on this
list and just mention that if any one is interested we run the PNW
universal client with packet driver TCP/IP without any problems.

The set up is as follows :

1) MSDOS 6.2x (am I allowed to mention this here ??)

2) PNW installed out of the box with additional FRAME Ethernet_II
   specified after Ethernet_802.3 (or 802.2) in NET.CFG.

3) Load freeware ODIPKT.COM (4563 bytes 19 June 92) as follows:
      
      odipkt 1 96

the 1 binds to second FRAME (i.e. Ethernet_II) and the 96 is the
interrupt in decimal.

This give you a basic packet driver interface which supports
WATTCP, NCSA telnet/ftp etc, MS-Kermit, SOSS (freeware NFS server
for DOS), a cheap shareware NFS client I can't remember but worked
very nicely,  plus some commercial stuff (e.g. James River Group
ICE TCP)

4) Load freeware WINPKT.COM (3516 bytes 10 Jan 93) as follows:

      winpkt 0x60 

0x60 is the same interrupt as in 3) but in hex this time !

This gives you the interface between the packet driver and Winsock
(we use Trumpet here)

All this stuff can be loaded at boot time. I havent found any
problems running DOS packet driver stuff even though the WINPKT
driver is loaded on top.

The only difficulties experienced have been with the BOOTP client
bit of NCSA stuff which doesnt work properly on top of the PNW
client although it does with just a straight packet driver
installation. 

( Note that if you do get the ordinary packet driver stuff, there
are files named the same as the MLID files in PNW e.g. NE2000.COM
but are totally different - you don't need them with the
installation outlined above but they can cause real problems if
they end up in your PATH !).

   
You can run a single DOS packet driver app from Windows provided
that Winsock apps are not running at the same time.

There is another freeware driver PKTMUX.EXE which allows multiple
packet driver apps to run simultaneously. I found this decidedly
unstable with Windows and was unable to get it to work at all with
the multi-tasking stuff in NWDOS 7.0 (this was over 2 years ago and
things may be different with OpenDOS). It may be OK with something
like SOSS (see above) and a telnet app running together but I
haven't tried.


Mark Stephens
Computer Services
National Library of Scotland

cs208ms AT nls DOT uk