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From: kinley@crim.ca (J. Darren Kinley)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: But how do packet drivers actually work?
Message-ID: <1991Apr8.181920.15868@IRO.UMontreal.CA>
Date: 8 Apr 91 18:19:20 GMT
References: <9104081436.AA24304@telesys.ncsc.navy.mil>
Sender: news@IRO.UMontreal.CA
Reply-To: vachon@IRO.UMontreal.CA (Mario Vachon)
Followup-To: kinley@crim.ca
Organization: Centre de recherche informatique de Montreal
Lines: 44


Hello,

I installed NCSA on a machine having a 3c501 ethernet card. Here is
what I put into my config.tel file. I don't remember how I got the
address value, but the software did work many months ago (and 
I expect that it still does).

> # For use by IBM PCs with a 3c501 ethernet card configured with:
> # dma chanel 1; interrupt level 3; and I/O base address 300 Hex.
> hardware=3c501                # network adapter board
> interrupt=3                   # hardware IRQ interrupt for 3C501 board
> address=d000                  # shared memory segment - 4 hex digits
> ioaddr=300                    # base address for I/O registers

Later, we purchased PC/TCP for a machine with a G/Ethernet card -
generic kernel version with the packet driver supplied by Gateway
Communications. At that time, I found out that packet drivers existed
and that they were a good thing. The supplied packet driver was
especially nice because I didn't have to give it any parameters and
somehow everything mysteriously worked!

(I would greatly appreciate if some kind sole could offer a brief
description of how applications send IP packets using packet drivers
and how received packets are handed back to the proper application.)


Now I am *trying* to install NCSA on both machines using packet drivers.


machine with 3c501 card;
  The driver tells me that I need 3 parameters;
  > packet_int_no int_no io_addr
  The int_no and io_addr are obvious, but where did packet_int_no
  come in and what exactly is it used for? (It would seem that in the
  case of the 3c501 card, the address parameter is not required, is
  this correct?) These parameters should be card specific information
  (?). What do I tell the NCSA application? Must I simply tell it to
  use that packet driver interface with 'hardware=packet'?

machine with the G/Ethernet card;
  When installing PC/TCP this driver seemed to configure itself.
  Again, what do I have to tell NCSA in order for it to be able 
  to talk to the packet driver?