Hello,

I am learning network setup through hands-on experients on my two PCs at home.
Their configurations are as follows;

first machine: nemesis (P3)
slackware linux 9.1
PCI ethernet card (eth0)
IP: 192.168.0.1
netmask: 255.255.255.0
uses: rpc.pcnfs

/etc/hosts contains
192.168.0.2 lucifer

second machine: lucifer (386)
MS-DOS 6
SN2000ct NIC
IP: 192.168.0.2
uses: pcnfs 5.1
nfs host: nemesis (192.168.0.1)

At present both the PCs are connected using just UTP cable between them. With
this setup, nothing is working.

The idea is to be able to connect (telnet) to my linux PC from my DOS PC.

I have following problems/queries:

1. Can I use a UTP cable to connect both the machines directly?
2. OR, do I have to use a switch?
3. What is wrong with my settings?
4. Is there any tutorial which discusses my kind of scenario?
(I have seen, generally, the home networking tutorials deal with newer machines
using newer hardware).

Can somebody be my mentor and guide me through this effort?
Thanking you and wishing you a Happy New Year!
Atul.

What kind of TCP/IP client are you using on your DOS 6 box?

Can each of these boxes ping them selfs?

If your going to use a direct cable it will have to be a cross over cable. If you have a switch then you could use regular or straight through cables.

Regards,
Fordeck

in order to connect two computers to each others without using a switch, you'll most likely need to use a cross over cable . cross over cables are usual UTP cables with slightly different design. google : how to make a cross over cable .... there are tones of websites which explains making cross over cables.
note that some network cards will let you do it without a cross over cables but most of them don't ....

read the following link:
http://www.littlewhitedog.com/content-8.html

the link will show you the differnce between the two. i'm pretty sure that you can buy cross over cables from the market ... ebay works :-)

I am using the cross-over UTP cable between the two machines. I am using the pcnfs software supplied by Sun. The telnet and ping utilities (on the DOS box) came along with the pcnfs software.
I downloaded pcnfs software from following location:
http://www.uk.kernel.org/sites/ftp.n...k/chest/pcnfs/

While booting up my DOS box, I get following messages:

PCNFS 101I : The name of this PC is lucifer (192.168.0.2)
PCNFS 134F : nemesis is not a PC-NFS authentication server.
PCNFS 135I : Searching for a PC-NFS authentication server...
PCNFS 137W : No PC-NFS authentication server is in use.
PCNFS 165W : Warning: no packets received from network: check connectors etc.

Also, the DOS machine is not able to ping itself.
The linux machine pings itself fine.

So, did I do something wrong while configuring PCNFS on my DOS machine? While installing the pcnfs on my DOS box, there were 2 options: ODI and NDIS. What are these options? Reading the help, I did not choose ODI. Is that wrong?

Thanks,
Atul.

If the dos box can't ping it self then there is definitely something wrong with TCP/IP stack on that machine.

I'm not familiar with pcnfs, but as I recall NDIS is used mainly on Windows based operating systems. Where ODI can be used on the old DOS boxes. So you might try setting up your pcnfs using the ODI option.

Regards,
Fordeck

OK. So I have a dumb question now. Do I have to install the tcp/ip stack *separately* on my DOS box? How do I do that? From the Vintage Computer Forums
( http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcfo...twork+DOS+6.22 )

I downloaded tcp32b.exe. Is it sufficient if I install it?

Thanks!
Atul.

Judging from your first post:

It would appear that you had the ability to assign an IP address. This would indicate tcp/ip software was present. So I would suggest if you have not already to re-install the pcnfs only with the ODI option.