Subj : Re: Day to day uses for retro computers
To   : Bob Worm
From : Spectre
Date : Mon Aug 07 2023 20:19:00

 BW> I remember struggling a *lot* getting any kind of networking to work under
 BW> DOS.  To be fair I was a young kid and didn't have any help but it seemed
 BW> extremely opaque.

The first cards and networking I had were Etherlink II's and NetWare lite
(IPX/ODI). This was really straight forward.  Like you sans help once you
got off the beaten path it was tricky getting stuff to behave.  I recall
having no idea what IRQ, IRQ Vector and Ports were for.  It got harder if you
had extra serial ports kicking around too taking up common address/irq
locations.

It got really tough when we tried integrating crynwyr drivers and using
TCP/IP I farted around with SHIMs for the IPX drivers and all manner of black
magic.  Best result I could ever manage was the various devices able to see
each other and retrieve basic information, but refusing any serious data
transfer. ALways just showed up as generic drive failure to DOS.

Spec


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