djc@lear.cs.duke.edu (David J. Cherveny) (06/05/90)
So you can hit your "n" key early, I'll give you the synopsis first. Read on for details. We are trying to run: BYU Novell, Clarkson packet driver, NCSA Telnet, - AND - Word Perfect Office. The problem is with WP Office. Switching between Telnet and ( for example ) Word Perfect ( the word processor ) is fine for a while then we get hung. So far, this only seems to happen when telnet is switch out. Ideas? You asked for it ( thanks! ), now the long version: We have a group of PCs running Novell and needed Telnet access to some other systems here. The users of these PCs ( secretaries ) use WP Office for a simple user menu and to switch between several applications loaded into memory at the same time. We'd LOVE to switch between Telnet and Word Perfect ( the word processor ) ) without having to exit in between. Well, I got the BYU IPX stuff, the latest greatest packet drivers from Clarkson and NCSA Telnet 2.3beta6. This is very much a production operation. To deal with the 802.3 vs V2 ethernet problem, we stuck a spare card in the server and configed Novell to do v2 ethernet on it ( and left the other card to serve the production clients 802.3 style ). Both cards are hooked to the same ethernet wire. To get from our LAN to the Med Center "backbone" we use a Cabletron bridge, not the Novell router stuff. So far so good. On our "test" workstation, we rebooted, loaded the packet driver, fired up the BYU IPX and NET4. Novell was fine, now using the the second ethernet card in the server. NCSA Telnet works too. We can telnet and ftp normally. So far so good. To make it convient in our environment, we added Telnet to WP Office's menu. It runs fine from there. If you exit, you land back in WPO. But thats not quite how we need to use it. For those who haven't seen WPO, it is a "switcher" menu program. It lets you load several programs into memory, and switch between them. The hack they use is the "spawn a dos" function. I suppose they trap it some how and switch you back to the menu instead of firing up a new DOS. To use it, you start some application, then do it's "create a new DOS" command. Instead of getting a new DOS, you land back in WPO's menu. Similarly, you can start NCSA, log into a host, and do ALT-E to "escape to DOS". You get the warning about doing other network commands then you land in WPO again. Well thats perfect! Just what we are after. Using the menu, you can flip back and forth, almost as nice a Mac with MultiFinder! Then... Sigh... :-( After a minute or so, the workstation hangs up. The server is OK. After a while we get a message that the Novell server isn't responding and the usual abort or retry question. So far, we only get hung when Telnet is inactive. We are sooo close! Any ideas? Details: We are running DOS 4.0 on an AT&T clone. Novell 286 Netware SFT v2.15 rev c Word Perfect Office 2.0 Micom/Interlan NI5210 card Clarkson NI5210 driver NCSA Telnet 2.3 beta 6 There is 2 meg of ram in the test workstation. There seems to be plenty left when we hang. Could it be... "keep alive" messages from the remote host. What does the packet driver do when it gets a TCP packet but the program isn't there to receive it? Could this ever work? Any mods to telnet ( I'd really hate to )? Some interaction with memory and/or interrupt vectors? Seems fine to me. As an alternative, we've gotten a demo copy of "Reflections". Any comments on it? Expensive though. NCSA/BYU etc fits our budget better. This has gotten much to long. For any readers still with me, thanks for your patience. Looking forward to all those letters. I'll summerize if worth while. Thanks David Cherveny djc@rm2000.mc.duke.edu Duke University Medical Center (919)684-6804
ssw@cica.cica.indiana.edu (Steve Wallace) (06/05/90)
When the packet driver receives an IP (or ARP) packet, it executes a receiver function that is part of the telnet executable. If WP office is swapping the receiver code into extended memory or disk your sunk. The packet driver will blindly execute what ever was at the address of the receiver function. Steven Wallace Indiana University Wallaces@ucs.indiana.edu