EE5990038@rvax.ccit.arizona.edu (Paul Charette) (12/14/89)
Greetings fellow net-landers ...
I have a question to those of you out there using NCSA Telnet and an
Etherlink 3C503 card with the "packet driver" option. I am encountering
an anomoly in the TSR which has me a bit puzzled.
Here, in a nutshell, is what happens. I run the TSR program as follows:
C:\> 3C503 0x60 3 0x300 0
Everything proceeds as expected, and the TSR routine tells me some
nice things about where it loaded the packet driver and tells me what my
Ethernet address is (correctly). Then it returns to the DOS prompt. Now comes
the weirdness ... if this is the first time the TSR is run following a power-on,
I get a 10-15 second "delay" ("delay" meaning nothing I type gets echoed but it
does get buffered). If this is following a soft-reset (Ctrl-Alt-Delete), and
I had run the TSR previous to the soft-reset, there is no delay - the packet
driver just installs and returns to DOS.
By the way, I do have TELBIN working perfectly with this TSR, so it
_does_ work. It just gives this weird delay. Also, if the Ethernet cable
is disconnected, there is no delay when you install the TSR, but once you
connect the cabling, there is a 10-15 second delay as before. If I didn't
know better, I'd guess this is some kind of RARP, but that doesn't seem
necessary (why have myip=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx in config.tel if this were true).
Has anyone else seen this bug? Is it, in fact, a bug, or a necessity?
What happens during that phantom 15 seconds? Is this explained somewhere in
the documentation that I missed?
By the way, I also get an error message after completing a TELBIN
session sucessfully. I get the following:
run-time error R6001
- null pointer assignment
Is this a problem? Is it in any way related to the first problem?
Thanks in advance for any responses.
Regards,
Paul Charette
University of Arizona
Computer Engineering Department
"Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses,
not some farcicle aquatic ceremony"