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IBM 5150 PC Network access

bettablue

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Feb 21, 2011
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Eugene, OR
I know we'have discussed this previously, but now I have 2 network adapters. One is a 3Com Etherlink #C5098 dated 1995. Drivers for this are supposed to be on the 3com site, but there appears to be something wrong with anything on their site that requires an OS earlier than XP Pro. I have searched Google, and found numerous links for this driver, but they all end up pointing to the same 3com site which then takes me to the HP.com site.

HP really has no business designing anything to do with web design. They are so bad at it.

I was finally brought to a Novell site that had drivers for a lot of older systems. However, I personally could not locate which exact driver I need for the card I have. All of the drivers seem to be small enough to load with a DOS boot disk, and run something link LapLink, but I don't know how to make that happen. I know I need to extract the driver, and associate it to the startup /boot routine by including it in the config.sys and autoexec.bat. But that's all I know. So far I have downloaded all of the driver packets dated around the time my card was. Barring that, I have also downloaded other versions so that one of the driver packets should be included.

Can I get your thoughts on where I need to go to find this? No, I don't just want a simple "Do this", or whatever and have someone send me a copy of their boot disk. No, what I want are some reading materials so I can learn to write the commands and routines I need to include on my boot disk. Once I have that, then I'll try to include the drivers on one of my floppy disks and configure it all from there.


Thanks again. One of these days, I'll end up being a technician, or something.
 
You might want to look HERE. I prefer the Micrsoft Network Client with the NETBEUI protocol. However, I have not been able to make netbeui completely work on anything newer than XP Pro. Also, as lutiana mentioned, be sure to check out Brutmans mTCP Suite.
 
Good to see you here. I havent had the pleasure in a while.

I know exactly what you mean. I guess what I'm after; contrary to my original poet here is a simple, get this/ and go here kind of answer. Well, I have gotten the drivers for both cards I received yesterday. I'm told I can access the storage drive on my primary Windows 7 computer using a driver and a protocol running with DOS boot disk. The problem is that I don't know how to write a boot disk with the required network protocols and drivers needed to run let's say, Laplink 3.0.

If I can get my IBM 5150 to access the storage drive on my Windows 7 computer, I can eliminate the zip drive, and any number of other solutions to transfer programs and games to the IBM 5150 PC. This will simplify accessing these programs and games tremendously.

I'll be keeping this post handy and looking at every aspect I can. Hopefully, I'll get something to work. If I do, I can hold off building the expansion unit for a while and make it possible to buy something else I'm working toward.



You might want to look HERE. I prefer the Micrsoft Network Client with the NETBEUI protocol. However, I have not been able to make netbeui completely work on anything newer than XP Pro. Also, as lutiana mentioned, be sure to check out Brutmans mTCP Suite.
 
I'll be going over all of this info tonight and tomorrow. This is great. Hopefully, I'll be giviing it a complete run on my 5150 by the weekend. Lutiana, Chuck and IBMAPC, Thanks again.

I'll be keeping this post available too, because when I get my Compaq Portable, I'll need to do it all over again. Well, in that case, I'll probably just have to update the driver to match the LAN Adapter and write out a new floppy disk.



 
I hadn't noticed your mentioning the boot floppy until just now. I assume that you do not have a hard drive in your 5150? In that case, I think Mike Brutman's mTCP would would be your best bet. You can easily fit a packet driver and mTCP FTP Server on a 360K floppy. The Microsoft stuff that I pointed to really needs a hard drive. Unless you are trying to keep your 5150 "bone stock", you might consider an XT-IDE adapter and a CF Card for hard storage.
 
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Hopefully, I'll be giviing it a complete run on my 5150 by the weekend.

You can't use a 3C509 in a 5150. The 3C509 series requires a 286 or higher. From the README:

Q: Can a 3C509B NIC be installed in an 8 bit slot?
A: Yes. The 3C509B NIC can be installed in any 8-bit slot. However, the 3c509B will only work in a computer with a 286 or higher processor.

TP NICs I've tested successfully on a 5150:

  • Intel Etherexpress 8/16 LAN
  • SMC 8013 series
  • NE2000 card (generic)
Some older 3C50x cards will probably work, but they lack an RJ45 jack; they only have AUI. You'll have to get an AUI adapter (luckily they're cheap).
 
You can't use a 3C509 in a 5150. The 3C509 series requires a 286 or higher. From the README:

I suspect that's less 286 vs. 8088 than an instruction set issue. A NEC V20 in the CPU socket should make that issue go away. At least, looking at the Pandora chip Linux drivers, I don't see anything in the code that would preclude 8088 operation if the driver were written correctly.

However, you may not want to use the V20...
 
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Some older 3C50x cards will probably work, but they lack an RJ45 jack; they only have AUI. You'll have to get an AUI adapter (luckily they're cheap).


Not so! I almost went down this route myself until I found a 3C503-TP. Haven't had a chance to test it out yet (first test case will be a 5155, if it fits...) but it is a 8bit ISA 10mb RJ45 NIC. Should be perfect for older PCs, in theory. Drivers and manuals are available off of 3com.com on the wayback machine.

EDIT: Of course there is something appealing about a full length 3C501 in a 5150. But that could be just me, if the dongle was a bit more elegant I would reconsider doing it. A guy posted a few NOS 3C501s a few weeks back on eBay but he was located in Romania.

EDIT 2: There are a number of variants of the 3C503: 16bit version, AUI/BNC version, etc. You want to get the 8bit TP version.
 
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I suspect that's less 286 vs. 8088 than an instruction set issue. A NEC V20 in the CPU socket should make that issue go away. At least, looking at the Pandora chip Linux drivers, I don't see anything in the code that would preclude 8088 operation if the driver were written correctly.

However, you may not want to use the V20...

Now, don't go quoting me on this Chuck but while looking for a NIC for my older equipment I thought I read that the 3Com 3C509 drivers did not work with a V20. I could be wrong though...
 
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I suspect that's less 286 vs. 8088 than an instruction set issue.

I thought so too, and a few years back I took the crynwr source and converted the REP INSWs to a macro that was 8088-friendly (in, stosw, loop). Still couldn't get the card to work. Maybe a timing issue? I didn't care enough at the time to pursue it further.

(That reminds me of another abandoned project, to take the parallel-port ZIP driver from iomega, disassemble it, and make it 8088-friendly... the code was much uglier than I was expecting, with overlay modules and such, so I abandoned that too.)
 
(That reminds me of another abandoned project, to take the parallel-port ZIP driver from iomega, disassemble it, and make it 8088-friendly... the code was much uglier than I was expecting, with overlay modules and such, so I abandoned that too.)

I thought this was already done. Isn't there a commercial product out there for this?

Edit: Here is the one I was thinking of. It says 8086 and better so not sure if it relies on some thing that would break it on the 8088.

This thread may also be useful.
 
I thought so too, and a few years back I took the crynwr source and converted the REP INSWs to a macro that was 8088-friendly (in, stosw, loop). Still couldn't get the card to work. Maybe a timing issue? I didn't care enough at the time to pursue it further.

Well, I do know that the 3C509 is substantially different from the 3C509B in that the latter has double the buffer size. Data transfer remains PIO. Could be the case that timing is really sensitive on the thing. One of these days (if I live so long) I'll have to grab a 3C509B card as see if I can satisfy my curiosity. But there are so many other NE2000-compatible cards that can operate in 8-bit mode that why should one bother?

The parallel interface storage makers seemed to want to guard the details of their protocol rather jealously. I figured out the Microsolutions Backpack floppy interface, but never want to go through that exercise again. It was less a matter of reverse engineering the code than probing and logging the signals and writing test programs to see if my guess was right.
 
I thought this was already done. Isn't there a commercial product out there for this?

Yes, but the speed is really bad. At the time, I was hoping to 8088-enable GUEST.EXE to get better speed than palmzip. Since that time, others have verified that GUEST.EXE works with an NEC Vx0 chip (adds all of the 80186 instructions, although IIRC the only ones needed by GUEST are ENTER, LEAVE, and REP INS).

So if you don't mind your machine not being "stock", an NEC V20/V30 will solve the problem (and a few other problems).
 
Thanks to all of you for the wonderful assistance, but I did find out through another member here that the 3Com card is incompatible for what I want/need to do. So, I have turned to the Intel card. I'll be installing it over the weekend. I have the drivers and instructions to follow, so everything looks good at the moment. It also looks like running an FTP client on my Windows 7 computer to teh 5250 is the way to go. I'll be looking into that and other options as I go along too.

So, once again, thank you. I am always happy with the help I have gotten here. And this time was no exception.
 
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