Under Win95, the WinSock interface has to be used to access the network
protocols. As FlexNet runs within the so called System-VM (and thus within
a DOS environment) it has no direct access to this interface. ETHER32
performs as a coupling device between FlexNet and the WinSock services.
The Win32 side of this coupling is done by a process called "FlexNet
Control Center", which is automatically launched after the 32bit kernel
of Windows has been booted. For this the FLEXCTL.EXE program must
be installed into the FlexNet directory, and the PATH environment
variable must point to this directory. The coupling will only work while
the FLEXCTL.EXE is running.
WARNING:?This applies only if the Win32 environment is running, i.e.
if you only boot DOS7 or run the computer in MS-DOS mode, FLEXCTL.EXE
(which is a Win32 application) cannot be started and ETHER32 will
consequently fail!
Having this is mind the installation and configuration of ETHER32
is rather easy: The driver needs to be installed like any other FlexNet
L1 driver, operating parameters are passed via the commandline. You can
reconfigure each ETHER32-channel with the ETH32CFG utility
while FlexNet is running (even from a DOS-Box under Windows), however you
cannot change the channel count. Modifications made with ETH32CFG
are not saved beyond a restart of FlexNet.
The driver must only be loaded ONCE, even if more than one channel is
to be used. The driver will prevent itself from beeing activated in a second
instance. As the WinSock interface is used, the protocols requested through
ETHER32 need to be installed and properly configured. That is:
You need to install the TCP/IP services of Win95 if you want to use AXIP,
and IPX if you want to use IPX, respectively. As usual, AXIP channels are
Point-To-Point and IPX uses ethernet broadcast, resembling a "real"
radio channel.
To pinpoint an important fact: ETHER32 needs a properly configured
WinSock32 interface, 16bit WinSock implementations like TrumpetWinsock
will not work at all. They should not be used with Windows95 anyway, and
you`re asking for trouble if you do!
ATTENTION: AXIP_RAW (i.e. "real" AXIP) isn't supported yet,
thus for linking to other stations via AXIP you need to use UDP encapsulation
(AXIP_UDP). For UDP, the destination port number may be set (and reset
using ETH32CFG). The receiver port number is hardcoded to 93.
AXIP_RAW will be supported as soon as we find out how to utilize this feature
through WinSock (read: maybe never).
- Commandline parameters:
- ETHER32 [/c=]<channel count> {/n<channel>=<mode>[,<arguments>]}
- with <mode>=IPX|AXIP|AXIP_UDP
- Example:
- ETHER32 /c=3 /n0=IPX /n1=AXIP,192.168.1.1 /n2=AXIP_UDP,192.168.1.2:4719
- FlexNet parameters:
- not applicable
