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different ways of connecting 5150 to internet

neutrino78x said:
Well, right now there are no 8 bit ISA IDE cards on ebay, however, there are many 8 bit ISA SCSI cards (link), including the Seagate ST-02 card, which had high density floppy (1.44 MB) built in to it, as well as an oboard BIOS. The seller said he has accessed a 2 GB SCSI hard drive on a 5150 using the card (because there is an an onboard BIOS, you don't need a driver).
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The prices for the bare cards on eBay, run from (with domestic shipping) between $50 and $200, which is just plain crazy stupid expensive. How many of these have ASPI drivers for, say, a SCSI tape drive or CD-ROM? A lot of 8-bit SCSI cards are just downright quirky--there are several old threads on this forum about that.
 
I think the amount of RAM and video RAM wouldn't be there to display the resolution of a remote desktop. Even at low colors combined with processing power I'd be surprised. ... although didn't Mike Chambers play with writing a VNC client now that I think about it?

You could use telnet server natively in windows 2000 based systems to get a remote command prompt. SSH would work too with 3rd party tools but I'm not sure how well the CPU would handle the required encryption/decryption speed wise.
 
Hello, i tried Bobcat (bcat-e07.exe) on my Amstrad PC 1512 (640 KB RAM, 8086) and it couldn't run. Although installation succeded, when i run lynx or bobcat.bat it stacks for a while and then it says "Abnormal program termination".
Another thing. How can i know the tcp/ip info for Arachne (ip, nameserver, gateway etc.)?? I want to try it on a 386 with an 8bit ISA NIC. I have an ADSL internet connection.
 
I have run Bobcat on a true blue IBM XT board...4.77MHz 8088, 640K, 8-bit ISA Paradise VGA card, using XT-IDE for storage and WD8003W 8-bit ISA ethernet card.

Very, very slow...and if a text mode browser is slow, I'd hate to see Arachne...but, it did run.

From the perspective of someone who only relatively recently 'got into this', MTCP is by far the easiest suite of TCP/IP stuff to get working...
 
kishy said:
Very, very slow...and if a text mode browser is slow, I'd hate to see Arachne...but, it did run.
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Arachne is very slow on the 386/20 its working on. The flow of data that is coming in from the webpages of today is just too much for it to handle. Cause Arachne has to write all data it receives from the webpage to the hard drive before showing the page. If a website has like 5 megs of data to download before viewing, and the 386 only has 2MB of Ram.... You see where I'm going.
 
I also have the XTIDE controller and a WD 8bit card :) Is MTCP gonna tell me all the TCP/IP details? Is there any other browser except bobcat? I dont know why it isn't working. I will try some older versions.

kishy said:
I have run Bobcat on a true blue IBM XT board...4.77MHz 8088, 640K, 8-bit ISA Paradise VGA card, using XT-IDE for storage and WD8003W 8-bit ISA ethernet card.

Very, very slow...and if a text mode browser is slow, I'd hate to see Arachne...but, it did run.

From the perspective of someone who only relatively recently 'got into this', MTCP is by far the easiest suite of TCP/IP stuff to get working...
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cauldron_ said:
I also have the XTIDE controller and a WD 8bit card :) Is MTCP gonna tell me all the TCP/IP details? Is there any other browser except bobcat? I dont know why it isn't working. I will try some older versions.
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That depends...what such details do you seek?
The MTCP applications are fairly standalone in nature...you just need your environment and configuration set up correctly (and the docs are quite good), run one of the programs (like IRCjr, to join an IRC server and channels) and you're in business. Naturally you also require your network interface to be operational and with any drivers running/loaded beforehand.

MTCP in its current state could not be used, as far as I know, to say...give a Windows 3.1 computer access to network shares or anything like that...it's just a set of really useful utilities. Running FTPSRV (the FTP server) is perhaps the best way to get software onto a vintage target box...load it up, connect (and make sure your client is only sending one file at a time), and then shove all the software you want onto the computer. This is how I got the Arachne self-extractor onto my 286...my 286 is for some reason unable or unwilling to run Arachne, though (I made a thread about that here, and it was never resolved)

At the time, I was using the 'newest' version of Bobcat...that thread doesn't mention it, but I definitely did get Bobcat going on the 8088 board (I say board because it's not a whole 5160 XT, just the mobo from one).
 
Ok, thanks that was very helpful. I will try it. As far as i can undestand, the DHCP will tell me the IP, gateway and nameserver and will save it in a .cfg file. And the other utilities will read from this file.
 
cauldron_ said:
Ok, thanks that was very helpful. I will try it. As far as i can undestand, the DHCP will tell me the IP, gateway and nameserver and will save it in a .cfg file. And the other utilities will read from this file.
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Yup, that's it. Documentation explains how to get your config file set up - and there is a sample included you can either rename and modify, to use, or create another following its general format. DHCP updates the IP address etc in the file.

Make sure you set up the environment variable...docs also explain how to do this, keep an eye out for that term in the docs and you'll find it.
 
Well, I finally chose to use a wifi travel router, configured in client mode.
While waiting for my ISA LAN card to arrive, I did set it up with my modern laptop. It will be simpler with the mTCP suite. :)
 
It works !
The mTCP tools are wonderful.

I'm trying to write some batch to send the system time (updated from a NTP server) to my multi-function card.

BTW, my problem is that the NTP tool displays the date&time and eventually sets the system clock, but that my multi-function card tools don't allow me to directly get the system clock to put it in the RTC module. I have to input it.
 
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Update, for MBBrutman as we discussed this subject yesterday.

I did use a 3Com 3C509B (ref. 3C509B-TPO).
This is a 16bits cards, but it works very well on 8bits PCs.

I did chose this card because the road was already paved : an article was available, and tools to configure this particular version of the card 3C509B had been compiled for 8088 and 8086.
This simplifies the problem, as other 16bits cards, even if they can be operated in 8bits, often ship with config tools that are not 8bits compatible.

I do also have a 3C509 (not -B). I was unable to use this util to configure it. So I prefered to buy the good version of the card instead of trying to find some old machine with ISA slots.

The config can't be skipped (unless you're very lucky) as there are no jumpers on those boards : I/O ports and other options are all set via the 3Com config tool.

The page is there (article + driver and setup tool download) : GitHub - hackerb9/3C509B-nestor: Driver for 3COM 3C509B cards in 8-bit IBM PC/XT slots
The article goes all the way even to configure MBBrutman's MTCP tools.

I also bought a TP-Link travel router (TP-Link Nano Routeur 750Mbps Wi-Fi AC, Support mode Répéteur/ mode Point d'accès/ mode Routeur/ mode Hotspot/ mode Client, 1 Port Ethernet, 1 Port USB, Idéal pour la maison et le voyage (TL-WR902AC): Amazon.fr: Informatique), as my computer is far from the house's wired network.

I configured it in client mode (acts as a RJ45 one port switch on one side and connects on the house's wifi on the other... for the PC, it's transparent as it's connected on a RJ45 port to the house's network).
I used a modern computer to do the basic configuration of the router, as it only feature a graphic interface which obviously couldn't be displayed on my XT.

I'll post some pics lated, but for now I used DHCP (of course), NTP, the FTP client (which is quite fun to use instead of moving aroune the PCs CF card) and the IRC client. The network connection seems to be very stable !
 
You can use a WiModem232 connected to a serial port to get to your wifi router and use any Hays modem compatible software to Telnet the web. There's also Frog Find for vintage computers that is a text search engine if you have an old browser that's no longer able to use Google etc.
 
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