jqj@oregon.uoregon.edu (JQ Johnson) (04/05/89)
Although a number of Packet Driver interfaces for various Ethernet cards are available for public (i.e. free) redistribution, there doesn't seem to be very much available for MCA machines. I've heard rumors of a public Packet Driver for the WD8003 MCA version, but none for the 3Com 3C523 or other popular MCA Ethernet cards. This is surprising since a 3C523 interface is in the public domain as part of NCSA Telnet and is much like the NI5210. Does anyone have a nonproprietary Packet Driver interface for the 3C523?
wjr@VAX.FTP.COM (Bill Rust) (04/06/89)
While we don't have a real 3c523 packet driver available yet, we do have an NDIS to Packet Driver converter available. This allows any NDIS (nee MAC) driver to look like a packet driver. I have tested it with the 3c523 driver and it does work. Of course (the gotcha), you need the 523 NDIS driver and a little piece of software called the 'protocol manager'. The 523 driver itself should be available from 3Com. The protocol manager itself is a different story. There was a great debate going over whether or not to put it in the public domain and I really don't know if anything has been decided yet. But, the NDIS spec is available and writing your own, at least for this purpose, shouldn't take much time at all. It is available for anonymous ftp from ftp.com. We don't provide source for the perverter, but I wrote it in assembler and didn't comment it very well so what difference does that make anyway? In any case, it's there and I would appreciate hearing from anybody who makes use of it. WJR William J Rust (wjr@ftp.com) FTP Software 26 Princess St Wakefield, MA 01880 (617)246-0900
jbvb@VAX.FTP.COM (James Van Bokkelen) (04/06/89)
The public-domain WD8003/A driver was done because W-D wanted it, and encouraged the people who did it. 3Com has no corresponding interest (but they will provide you an NDIS driver one of these days). Anyone who has a 3C523, Russ Nelson's skeleton and the NCSA driver could do one in fairly short order, but it may be that PS/2s are uncommon in academia. jbvb