IPX & NET3 under VP/ix

[Charlie Sauer]

In article <6805 at spdcc.SPDCC.COM> rbraun at spdcc.COM (Rich Braun) writes:
>ellis at epca.UUCP (Ellis Carter) writes:
>>I am trying to connect to a Novell server using one of my vt's, IPX, and Net3.
>>I also have NFS & TCP/IP running on this box....
>
>I have a couple of followup questions to this one:
>
>1)  Is it possible to do this under SCO Unix, as opposed to Interactive?
>    If so, are there limitations as to which boards will work (for
>    example, as I understand it DMA won't work under VP/ix)?
>
>    SCO has claimed that its VP/ix will _not_ support any LAN card.  I refuse
>    to believe this, considering Interactive wrote VP/ix and does support
>    LAN cards under VP/ix.  My life would be much easier if I could get to the
>    Novell LAN without having to shut down Unix.
>
>2)  If running TCP/IP on the Unix system, would it not require a second
>    LAN card to run IPX and Netware under VP/ix?  Or does the Unix TCP/IP
>    driver serve as a packet driver, routing packets correctly between
>    applications (as does the Clarkson driver I use with DOS systems)?

I didn't see the original article, and haven't found it with a casual search.
However, I used IPX/NET3 with VP/ix under Dell V.3 1.1 (which is derived from
ISC 2.0.2) for about 10 months until I switched to SVR4 for my main machine, 
and I now use IPX/NET3 routinely with Merge.  I don't know for sure about doing 
this with SCO, but I would suspect it is about the same.  I can't say that I
figured this stuff out originally - Jeremy Chatfield showed me the basics for
VP/ix and Richard Amberg showed me the equivalence for Merge.  But I've sorted
through several different configurations, and even hacked together a terrible
kludge so that Unix machines can print on a Netware printer using lp in a normal
fashion.  With enough patience it is usally possible to get something useful
working.

To address (2) first, I don't know of anyone who has accomplished this with one
LAN card, and I strongly suspect it would take major driver work on both the
Unix and DOS sides to get it work.

In my experience, the hardest part is getting the hardware configured right,
given the historical PC interrupt/io/memory addressing constraints and the
associated limited flexibility in the controller implementations.  In my 
original case, I already had a 3C503 in use for TCP/IP and was able to add
an 8003 for Netware.  I didn't want/need a local printer, and used IRQ 7 for
the 8003.  Here's the line from the vpixdevs file tha I used:

	WD8003:dda:/dev/wd8003:7:0x340;0x35f:0xd8000;0xd9fff::Y

By default, VP/ix will attempt to use drives Y:&Z: itself, so it it necessary to
modify the standard CONFIG.SYS with a LASTDRIVE, e.g., LASTDRIVE=P, and have
a private AUTOEXEC.BAT to do a non-default DOSMOUNT, e.g., 

     : Run the Redirector
     REDIR
     : Establish DOS volume mappings to /usr/vpix 
     DOSMOUNT P:\ O:\usr\vpix 
     : Establish a PATH
     PATH C:\;O:\dosbin;O:\unixbin
     : Run IPX to install device driver
     IPX
     : Run NETBIOS to provide NETBIOS services
     NETBIOS
     : Now run the network attachment program.
     NET3
     : Change to drive Q (next drive after LASTDRIVE)
     : and run LOGIN to establish a server login.
     Q:LOGIN
     : That's it, we should be in now.
     
After this is run the VP/ix session can see both the UNIX file system and the 
NetWare drives.

For Merge, things are similar.  Here's what I have in /etc/dosdev:

	wd8003	d	.240-25f.7.ce000-cffff.

There is no equivalent of the RDIR/DOSMOUNT above, e.g., I use 

	lastdrive=p
	shell=c:\command.com c:\ /e:1024 /p

in config.sys and 

	PATH c:\usr\dbin;c:\usr\lib\merge
	c:\home\sauer\bin\ipx
	c:\home\sauer\bin\net3
	q:login

in autoexec.bat.

As I said, the hard part is getting the hardware configured right.  I had things
working fine with two 8003's and SVR4/Merge, but Friday I started switching to
a machine with more integrated I/O and also tried to replace the Unix 8003 with 
an 8013, and so far I don't have IPX working.  The symptoms indicate an address
conflict somewhere.
--
Charlie Sauer       Dell Computer Corp.        !'s:uunet!dell!sauer
(512) 343-3310      9505 Arboretum Blvd        @'s:sauer at dell.com
                    Austin, TX 78759-7299