jbvb@VAX.FTP.COM (James Van Bokkelen) (11/16/88)
The Excelan board has its own on-board processor, and doesn't come with a built-in ROM (like 3Com suplies with the 3C505, which makes it usable without a load module). So, you have to have Excelan's loader and load module before the EXOS205 will do anything. The load modules that Excelan will sell you contain a TCP/IP, which Excelan's utilities use. Adapting PC-IP to use the on-board TCP/IP would be possible, but difficult (the socket-style calls Excelan supports are quite a change from the PC-IP upcall/downcall architecture), and I wouldn't expect them to let you use their TCP/IP for free. We sell a version of our PC/TCP with an unsupported load module (Excelan calls it NX), which makes the board usable as a link-layer-only interface. I don't know of any version of PC-IP which has a driver for Excelan's NX, but it could be done. I can't speculate as to Excelan's willingness to provide NX, let alone on what terms. James VanBokkelen FTP Software Inc.