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Source for ODI drivers or Interlan NI5210 driver?

SpidersWeb

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Feb 16, 2012
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Does anyone know where I might be able to find a large collection of ODI drivers for ISA network cards? Something that isn't easily found on google? (I've spent 2 hours on google).

I'm specifically looking for NI5210.com - but not the Cygwin packet driver.

Being a fairly well supported card (Netware, Linux, OS2, Windows etc) I didn't think I'd have trouble finding the driver disk - but apparently it's vanished in to thin air.
Normally I'd just put them to one side, but I have 3, and they fit nicely in my 286/8088 systems.

Also if anyone has any idea of a software package which may contain the ODI driver in .COM format that I could get, that'd be helpful too.
 
Cheers for that, I'd heard about a few of those but it's helpful to have it all one page like that.

If I can't find the original drivers I'll try that, but the Cygwin packet driver (the only one I could find) failed to work with all 3 cards in a 286-12 - can see the RAM, I've verified the settings, but it gives an immediate timeout error. This might be because of the 12Mhz bus and wait states being used on the slot it was in - so perhaps it'll work in an XT - but I really wanted the original driver just to see if that would work and was surprised I couldn't find it!

I was hoping they'd just be a WDPLUS clone or something, but nope :/
 
I did some Internet sleuthing myself, and found a comment that the 5010, 5210 and 6210 were all part of the same family of cards, the implication being that the same driver would run all of them:
https://partner.nameless-rom.org/gi...mmit/8efc91254fda97ee78e2e0b8e016120e664131de

I did some more searching and it appears that the NI5210 is an old enough card that it had NetWare 2.x drivers. Are you sure ODI drivers were ever made for this card?
http://files.mpoli.fi/unpacked/hardware/net/novell/drvkit.exe/landrv/racal/ni5210/
http://r3tr0.de/mirror/ftp.mpoli.fi/hardware/NET/NOVELL/index.html

It looks like when the 5010 came out the company was Micom Interlan, then later it became Racal Interlan presumably after a buyout or merger. It's possible that Racal decided to only make ODI drivers for the newer generation of cards (like the NI6510).

Also, is there any reason you need to use an NI5210? Can't you just use another card for which ODI drivers are more readily available?
 
Awesome, thanks for having a look around - that certainly gives me some things to try out.
I have the ODI driver for the NI6510, and the EtherExpress/3C507 shouldn't be hard to locate.

I'm confident there was an original ODI driver because I found it in a file listing, but inside the zip was only the files to suit the NI6510 - the NI52xx files were elsewhere (frustrating). I also found people on Google Groups asking for the driver - and they were sent to Racal's BBS or CompuServe to download it which aren't around anymore.

...
52ODIDOS.EXE NI5210 31K 05/94 ODI Driver Ver 5.02 for DOS
52ODIOS2.EXE NI5210 30K 04/95 ODI Driver v5.01 for OS/2
...

(Also just realized it's not NI5210.COM)

The desire for running these cards isn't so much necessity, but rather being 8 bit era cards they go nicely in PCs from the 80's without looking out of place - and I have three of these. I run a Netware Lite network, so ODI is preferable.

For the 286 in question, I've now jammed in a Compex ENET-16, but I wanted to be all sorted for when I go to use the cards in the future. If I can find a generic driver that works (like 3C507, EtherExpress etc) then I'll be golden. Also was just curious if there is an old FTP site out there with a big /odi/ directory that'd missed google's glance.
 
Guess what - I was just archiving data from various old diskettes, and among them was "WRQ Reflection", some TCP/IP package for Windows 3.1
And it came with a bunch of ODI and NDIS drivers, including a few for Racal-Datacom NIxxxx
They may be what you're looking for - good luck!
 

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  • NI.ZIP
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Guess what - I was just archiving data from various old diskettes, and among them was "WRQ Reflection", some TCP/IP package for Windows 3.1
And it came with a bunch of ODI and NDIS drivers, including a few for Racal-Datacom NIxxxx
They may be what you're looking for - good luck!

Brilliant! I'll give it a try, looking at the contents it looks promising:

"Racal-Datacom NI5210 ODI MLID v2.11 (920914) NI5210 Hardware Driver" in the ASCII characters of NI5210.COM.

Edit: it also has all that Netware goodness like: "The frame type specified in the NET.CFG is not supported" and "The LSL is not loaded"

Racal, Datacom, Micom, Interlan - is there a name this company didn't use?
 
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