Network cards and Win98SE

[malcolm at avitech.com.au]

> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 12 May 2019 17:41:24 -0500
> From: "Charles" <charlesmorris800 at centurytel.net>
> To: "cctalk digest" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> Subject: Network cards and Win98SE
> Message-ID: <4F49BB9C660F44B8B67371D3BAB651AA at CharlesDellLap>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
> 	reply-type=original
> 
> I have tried for two days to get wireless networking running on my old PC
> under Win 98SE, so I can use PUTR without a separate partition or boot. XP
> is on an 8.4 GB drive. 98SE is on an older 540 MB drive.
> 
> There are two network cards (a Netgear WPN311 with Atheros chipset, and
> an
> Encore ENWLI-G2 with Realtek 8185 chip) and neither will work with
> Win98SE.
> I have tried the manufacturer's drivers, Atheros drivers, Realtek
drivers...
> none of it works. The Realtek driver installs but gives a fault in
RUNDLL32.
> 
> Netgear's website claims that the WPN311 can run under 98SE and later.
> Some
> sources for that driver package say it starts with XP. Although I would
tend
> to believe the manufacturer...
> The same Netgear card in the same motherboard was working correctly with
> the
> XP drive.
> 
> I even did a fresh install of 98SE. Then installed the WPN311 software,
then
> the card. Windows says the card is installed and working properly.
> But the Netgear utility won't run (hangs, Task Manager showing wlancfg5
not
> responding). That's usually because it can't see the card.
> 
> Searching the net including various forums from years ago hasn't helped.
> So I'm about to give up. Wasted enough hours on this. Back to XP with a
DOS
> partition for running PUTR.
> Unless someone has a better idea :)
> 
> thanks
> Charles

Hi Charles,

About 5 years ago I spent way too much time trying to sort out a PC platform
that would meet my needs for disk imaging (ImageDisk), PUTR, network file
transfers and ISA-based EPROM programmers.  I eventually settled on a
Pentium II bare motherboard, AHA-1522A SCSI card (for its floppy controller
which supports single-density disks), CF card as a hard drive, FDADAP
adapter (for 8" drives), a generic ISA network interface card, MSDOS 6.22,
Norton Commander and Michael Brutman's mTCP package.

With this setup I can run PUTR and ImageDisk without any Windows-related
issues. File transfers to other computers are a breeze: mTCP includes an FTP
server and I just run FileZilla on my Windows machines to connect to the
MSDOS machine.  Alternatively I can power down the MSDOS machine, and plug
the CF card into a USB adapter and copy files that way instead.

I appreciate these suggestions won't help if you need to have Win98 on the
same machine for other reasons.

Malcolm.