Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!VAX.FTP.COM!jbvb From: jbvb@VAX.FTP.COM (James Van Bokkelen) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc Subject: Re: Somebody teach this novice please ? Message-ID: <8805052348.AA14481@vax.ftp.com> Date: 5 May 88 23:48:49 GMT References: Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 19 The IBM Ethernet card is just an Ungermann-Bass PC-NIC card under another label. They sell a manual, which is reasonable as hardware manuals go. I don't think U-B's manual is nearly as good. The card doesn't do DMA, instead it has a chunk of shared memory that appears in the PC's address space up high (configurable). To transfer a packet, you copy it to or from the right place (finding the right place is a little complicated). Yes, you need a device driver (at least). The interface to the driver varies: the MIT PCIP package links the driver into the application, as do the CMU PCIP, and most of FTP's drivers. There are other ways of doing it. There is no standard (under DOS), although we've proposed something on that line (our Packet Driver spec, which I posted a while back). We sell a TCP/IP package for that card, IBM sells their own (but you may be able to get it free because you're at CMU). We also sell libraries that let you make high-level calls to the protocol routines (or even use Berkeley socket calls). I don't know about IBM's programming interface. James VanBokkelen FTP Software Inc.