Author Topic: TCP/IP from MVDM DOS sessions  (Read 1416 times)

SoundChaser

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TCP/IP from MVDM DOS sessions
« on: April 17, 2025, 04:20:15 am »
Hello folks,

TL;DR - is there a recipe to have packet drivers in a MVDM session talk to a NIC's physical device driver?

----

If I got it correctly, in order to reach the network MVDM forwards network requests (from interrupts) to the matching VDD (Virtual device driver) which in turns escalates the call to the PDD (Physical device driver) which allows for coexistance of multiple DOS sessions using different protocols on the same network card managed by OS/2 at the PDD level. Great.

Fast forward in 2025, I mostly only care about TCP/IP. While my previous searches led me to find some development material for "IBM TCP/IP for OS/2" (the vanilla TCP/IP support) there's really only very few applications designed around IBM's SDK beyond IBM's own tools or WinOS2 TCP/IP support.

About _every_ other TCPIP application out there was, instead, using the MIT/FTP software packet driver approach.

Months ago, I entertained the idea of porting mTCP for IBM TCP/IP but there's a fair amount of uncertainty to that project, which certainly could end up being a great article for hackaday.com or patreon. A little voice tells me, there must a simpler way, but we just collectively forgot about it?

Reading about FTP Software TCP/IP for OS/2 in InfoWorld archives, in order to make the software run, the reviewers had to use the ODINSUP, because their network adapter only came with Netware support.

See: https://books.google.com/books?id=WzgEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&hl=fr&pg=PA86#v=onepage&q&f=false

Then we have this also very entertaining bit from Netware that ODINSUP has (of course) it's mirror in ODI2NDI.OS2 that's part of (wait for it... it hurts....) NTS/2 (LAPS)... which is probably MTPN now?

See: https://support.novell.com/docs/Tids/Solutions/10051720.html

Given that there exists packet driver shims for ODI and NDIS that lives in the DOS realm, these would typically forward any request to the PDD through the virtual device driver. With probably a fair amount of net.cfg fun, it seems - at least on paper - that we could use mTCP software from DOS sessions with the packet driver correctly configured with the right shim.

For now, I would only care about Intel ethernet as it would cover most Thinkpads (for those running OS/2 or ArcaOS on bare metal) and virtualisation solutions.

Has anyone ever been able to do that? Is there a flaw in my conception of how network works in DOS that would make this usage scenario unviable?


SoundChaser

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Re: TCP/IP from MVDM DOS sessions
« Reply #1 on: April 17, 2025, 04:22:13 am »
Adding another bit, which seems to do exactly what I want, but in IPX world

http://www.jacco2.dds.nl/freeipx.html

Martin Iturbide

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Re: TCP/IP from MVDM DOS sessions
« Reply #2 on: April 17, 2025, 09:43:42 am »
Hello SoundChaser.

Here it is something related that I tried without success:
https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php/topic,2961.0.html

My goal at that time was to run  MicroWeb DOS web browser under a DOS VDM, but I was not able to do it. It uses mTCP and some connection between mTCP and IBM TCP/IP for DOS was required. Even the author of mTCP was here on the forums (mbbrutman), but I was not at his technical level to keep going.

Regards
Martin Iturbide
OS2World NewsMaster
... just share the dream.

SoundChaser

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Re: TCP/IP from MVDM DOS sessions
« Reply #3 on: April 17, 2025, 01:00:58 pm »
Yeah my experiment would consist in using FTP Software TCP/IP stack instead. It likely comes with a VDD for DOS since they support WinOS2 (I expect it to be similar to Trumpet)

That driver would be a packet driver, which would be mTCP compatible (maybe?)

Sean Casey

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Re: TCP/IP from MVDM DOS sessions
« Reply #4 on: April 18, 2025, 03:41:29 pm »
Hi SoundChaser,

Should you ever get FTP Software's stack working on OS/2, please report back.    I use Paradox 4.5 for DOS w. SQL Link to Interbase which requires FTP Software's TCP/IP stack.  Would like to ditch DOS and move it to OS/2.

I once looked at using the DIS_PKT shim that works with an NDIS interface, but due to my limited skills, I didn't get very far.

SoundChaser

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Re: TCP/IP from MVDM DOS sessions
« Reply #5 on: April 22, 2025, 05:54:53 am »
Should you ever get FTP Software's stack working on OS/2, please report back.    I use Paradox 4.5 for DOS w. SQL Link to Interbase which requires FTP Software's TCP/IP stack.  Would like to ditch DOS and move it to OS/2.

Ever considered migrating it to Paradox 4.5 for Windows 3.1 instead? If it was discarded, I'd be curious to know more. The core db engine is supposedly the same.


Bogdan

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Re: TCP/IP from MVDM DOS sessions
« Reply #6 on: April 23, 2025, 09:03:41 pm »
Hello folks,

TL;DR - is there a recipe to have packet drivers in a MVDM session talk to a NIC's physical device driver?
It works without any problems using FTP Software's PC/TCP with INT61VDD.SYS driver.

Quote
Fast forward in 2025, I mostly only care about TCP/IP. While my previous searches led me to find some development material for "IBM TCP/IP for OS/2" (the vanilla TCP/IP support) there's really only very few applications designed around IBM's SDK beyond IBM's own tools or WinOS2 TCP/IP support.
The DOS part of the TCP/IP PTK shares the same interfaces with FTP Software's PC/TCP Version 4. So all TCP/IP DOS applications shipped with the PC/TCP product or OnNet should work.

Sean Casey

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Re: TCP/IP from MVDM DOS sessions
« Reply #7 on: April 30, 2025, 12:47:30 am »
Ever considered migrating it to Paradox 4.5 for Windows 3.1 instead? If it was discarded, I'd be curious to know more. The core db engine is supposedly the same.

I use Paradox 9 on Linux Wine almost daily for a couple GUI db apps, but I like Paradox for DOS if I just need to look things up via SQL as it's very fast.  PDX for DOS works fine in OS/2 when accessing SQL Server via db-lib, but I can't get to my Interbase data via Paradox for DOS in OS/2 as it requires FTP Software's FTP stack.  Not a big deal, but I had spent some time a while back to see if I could get it to work under OS/2, so I was interested in this thread. 

I couldn't find anything on that INT61VDD.SYS driver Bogdan refered to?

SoundChaser

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Re: TCP/IP from MVDM DOS sessions
« Reply #8 on: May 02, 2025, 01:33:05 pm »
Quote
It works without any problems using FTP Software's PC/TCP with INT61VDD.SYS driver.

OMG, Bogdan... this is what I was looking for, and for a while now, but it seems that information was obliterated from the search engines.

The VDD must have a PDD counterpart? I assume this comes from PC/TCP for OS/2?


Sean Casey

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Re: TCP/IP from MVDM DOS sessions
« Reply #9 on: May 03, 2025, 11:30:14 pm »
I see, that INT61VDD.SYS, an INT 61h emulator, was included in PC/TCP for OS/2.  I'll need to install both FTP Software's OS/2 and DOS products.

Update:  Installed PC/TCP OS/2 and DOS on Warp 3 and a quick test of the PC/TCP DOS stack seems to work fine.  Unfortunately, the version of FTP Software's PC/TCP for OS/2 version I have, version 1.3.1, isn't compatible with ArcaOS (INT61VDD.SYS dated 3/31/95).   
« Last Edit: Today at 03:24:07 am by Sean Casey »

SoundChaser

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Re: TCP/IP from MVDM DOS sessions
« Reply #10 on: Today at 03:47:41 pm »
I see, that INT61VDD.SYS, an INT 61h emulator, was included in PC/TCP for OS/2.  I'll need to install both FTP Software's OS/2 and DOS products.

Strictly speaking, it's not that much an emulator, but rather a virtualization of the network hardware to handle DOS 61h interrupts. IF you mean "it emulates a DOS packet driver", I agree with you it replaces what would be otherwise a so-called DOS "packet driver".


Update:  Installed PC/TCP OS/2 and DOS on Warp 3 and a quick test of the PC/TCP DOS stack seems to work fine.  Unfortunately, the version of FTP Software's PC/TCP for OS/2 version I have, version 1.3.1, isn't compatible with ArcaOS (INT61VDD.SYS dated 3/31/95).

ARGH. After I installed PC/TCP 1.3.1 (winfiles, IBM TCP/IP 1.3.1 is really PCFTP) my system behaved on 2nd reboot (curiously, the first reboot went fine) with a country.sys screen of death. I had to recover an archive from prior to the installation of PC/TCP.

So close. Here's my plan for my second attempt:

- extract the PC/TCP lines from the "current" (archived) config.sys
- merge them in my "current" (active) config.sys but at the end but keep out anything related to the old Microsoft components.

I'm curious about the symptoms you've observed, if they differ from my boot error.


Sean Casey

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Re: TCP/IP from MVDM DOS sessions
« Reply #11 on: Today at 07:32:05 pm »
I'm curious about the symptoms you've observed, if they differ from my boot error.

The installation routine for PC/TCP for OS/2 would not execute on ArcaOS, so I had copied the relevant OS/2 entries from my Warp 3 config.sys file from the installation that was working. 

I was getting a SYS01521 error during the boot of ArcaOS.  It just took a INT61VDD.SYS device statement and adding a reference to the PCTCP installation directory placed at the tail of my LIBPATH to cause the error. 

If you have better luck, please post your findings.

Dave Yeo

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Re: TCP/IP from MVDM DOS sessions
« Reply #12 on: Today at 07:45:35 pm »
Code: [Select]
F:\test>help 1521

SYS1521: There are too many parameters specified in the
*** statement on line *** of the CONFIG.SYS file.  Line ***
is ignored.

EXPLANATION: The specified statement in the CONFIG.SYS file has more
parameters than are expected.

ACTION: Edit the CONFIG.SYS file to correct or remove the incorrect
statement and restart the system.

One I haven't seen.
Understand that through Warp v4 OS/2 used a 16 bit stack based on BSD 4.3, while now we use a 32 bit stack ported from AIX based on BSD 4.4. Not sure about using an old device with the new stack.

SoundChaser

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Re: TCP/IP from MVDM DOS sessions
« Reply #13 on: Today at 11:03:51 pm »
Sean: I did not have that error message. I won't have the chance to try out until tomorrow at the latest, but I'll report back. Thank you for the report!!

Dave: Possibly. I'm still no clear how the PC/FTP exactly works, but since it was meant as a TCPIP stack for OS2 systems _without_ one (without IBM tcpip for os2) I suspect the IBM BSD stack to be completely bypassed?