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Messages - Carl Miller

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1
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 16, 2020, 06:58:55 am »

It would probably be easier, and possibly even cheaper, to find a newer computer. Look for an IBM ThinkPad T42, or T43. Ask your friends, a lot of people have something stored somewhere, taking up room, that they would like to get rid of. Chances are, that it would have a WiFi built in, as well as an ethernet port. Watch prices, a lot of used computers do not have disk drives.

Thank you Doug, but I am quite happy with my Dell, I find it quite adequate for what I want to do in spite of it's age, even though it doesn't measure up to post 1998 standards. If I never get it to even sniff an internet connection I think I'll hold on to it, if for nothing else then for nostalgia's sake, even though the 90's are probably not anyone's idea of a nostalgic time. At least not for me.

Apologies to anyone who long wistfully for the age of the 90's.

You see, I came of age in the 80's, I graduated high school in '83, I served in the Marine Corps in the 80's, I was married in '87. If I had came of age a decade later, then my old Dell would be the holy grail of computers. But in my time, It was Commodore 64's and TI 99/4a's, really not of much use now, even though I have a TI99/4a set up of my own.

Anyone want to buy a TI99/4A set up?

 ;D


2
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 15, 2020, 08:32:32 pm »
Hi All,

I've decided to take the recommendation from many of you and go with the travel router. However, I will need an ethernet pcmcia card since my ancient laptop does not have an ethernet port.

Would someone recommend a card to me (preferably one that's still available, on eBay possibly) along with the driver, and where I can download said driver?

Please keep in mind that my laptop is 1998 vintage and I am running OS/2 4.52, cards and drivers for eCS or ArcaOS may or may not work, y'all would know more about that than me.

I will probably need advice on how to set TCP/IP / NetBIOS etc. for ethernet in OS/2. 

I want to thank everyone who chimed in to help with the wifi card and set up. I have learned a lot and I appreciate everyone's help with that. I now realize that my old card will never connect with a modern, WPA2 encrypted wifi system and I am not willing to reset my wifi security just to get on the net every now and then with an outdated system.

3
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 11, 2020, 06:06:17 pm »
Hi Carl, the results of your running netstat -a imply that somehow you have also set your laptops adapter to use 10.0.0.232, which of course will result in all kinds of problems having 2 machines on the net with the same address.
Need to start over.
Does your laptop have a led or such that lights up when the radio is turned on? My T42 has one above the keyboard.
You should look at the scripts that Neil posted earlier. They're written in Rexx, OS/2's (and most IBM OSes) native scripting language, saved with a cmd suffix. They should turn the radio on and off. Guess you'd have to type them in, use e.exe for an editor.

That's possible Dave, not being very familiar with how the wifi set up works.

My wifi card has a little green led that comes on after the driver is loaded on boot up. It is generally always on when the laptop is on, usually just to test wifi settings and try to learn about the os.

I saw Neil's scripts, but wasn't very familiar with how they should be used, thanks for clearing that up for me.

I will boot it up and clear out the settings today, thanks for the advice.

4
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 11, 2020, 04:57:31 pm »
Here's what was happening, I was pinging my other laptop, my Windows 10 machine. If I read the results of ifconfig from that machine correctly, the ip of my wifi router is 10.0.0.1, the Default Gateway, is this correct??? The ip of the windows box is 10.0.0.232, so I was actually pinging it instead of the router. My mistake.

But it does show that my ancient wifi card is working no?

So, Doug and Andi, you were right,  you must be connected to the wifi system to ping the router.

I have learned something here anyway, even with a mistake.

My apologies to Doug and Andi, you were right and I was wrong because when I try to ping 10.0.0.1 it fails.

5
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 11, 2020, 06:38:27 am »
What does netstat -a report?

What does the result from netstat -a mean Dave? I haven't got a clue.

It shows what addresses are assigned to your system.
127.0.0.1 is the local loopback address, almost always there and isn't connected to a card
10.0.0.232 is assigned to your adapter (WiFi card) and is what you were pinging.
Your router likely has an address like 10.0.0.1 or more usually 192.168.0.1

Ok, but on my main system, windows 10, wifi connected it shows an ip address of 10.0.0.232 for the router, am I missing something here?

6
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 11, 2020, 05:56:20 am »
Just want to make sure I'm not pinging my own wifi card, Inquiring minds want to know.

7
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 11, 2020, 05:53:40 am »
What does netstat -a report?

What does the result from netstat -a mean Dave? I haven't got a clue.

8
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 11, 2020, 05:45:21 am »
What does netstat -a report?

I will type out what is on the OS/2 System's screen, tomorrow I will post a photo:

addr 127.0.0.1 Interface 9 mask 0xff000000 broadcast 127.0.0.1
Multicast addrs:
224.0.0.1

addr 10.0.0.232 Interface 0 mask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.0.0.255
Multicast addrs:
224.0.0.1

9
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 11, 2020, 05:31:26 am »
Hey Doug and All, check it out.

And, if you look in the lower right hand corner of this post, my ip address is listed. Of course, this is my main system's ip. Then there's this from Whois:


10
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 11, 2020, 03:25:33 am »
Quote
the pci utility you linked to is no longer there, so I used lspci instead. the relevant output:

00:04.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1131 (rev 01)
00:04.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1131 (rev 01)

Which is completely useless information. It does not supply the PCI ID information, which is essential to understand what device it really is. The posted information is actually for the PCMCIA adapter, not the WiFi device, anyway, so it is mostly irrelevant. From other things that you have said, the PCI ID information is probably not going to help anyway.

I know it's for the PCMCIA adapter and I mentioned that in my post. I also recall being puzzled that it didn't pick up my wifi card.

Brother, you are a real piece of work. "Completely useless information", listen, there are more civilized ways of putting things such as, "Well, that program didn't give me what I was looking for, instead try this....". Can we not be gentlemen here?

I did what you asked as far as PCI information, I can't help it if the program I used didn't give you what you wanted. Martin has posted a good link to the program you suggested and I will try it again later and post the results here.

Quote
You can PING a router, if you are connected to it. From everything that you have said, there is no possibility that you are connected to the router, unless you back off the router WiFi security to WEP,  plus add the logon information, in the Adapters, and Protocols program. It may work, if you set the router WiFi security completely off, without setting the logon information. PING is not going to work, under any circumstances, until you do that. If you are actually connected, the rest should work (within the restrictions of modern networking). Are you PINGing the router, or the WiFi adapter? The WiFi adapter will respond (assuming it is installed properly, which I suspect you may have accomplished). If your router is responding to a PING, everything else should work too, but, from what you have said, I find it difficult to believe that it is actually responding (it is not connected).

I pinged the IP of my wifi router, and all packets were acknowledged, what can I tell you? Please stop making me out to be a liar, it's not becoming of a gentleman.

Why is it so hard to believe that I got the card installed and working? I'm not a complete dunce. Close, but not quite.

For some reason I still get the impression that you think I'm some dumb twenty something playing around with his grandpa's old laptop. Well, I'm the grandpa and I'm playing around with MY laptop. Not just to have something to do, but because I have a purpose behind what I'm trying to do here.

Quote
Cell phones take great photos.

I don't use a cell phone. Hate the bloody things. I will ping the router again and get my wife to snap a photo and I will post it here, since you are so certain that I'm spinning yarns here. And, maybe I am mistaken, wouldn't be the first time, but when you run ping <<IP ADDRESS OF MY WIFI ROUTER>> and it comes back with x number of packets sent and x number of packets received and 0% packet loss, what does that tell you?

Quote
What are you doing to try to attach to the internet? What, exactly, is the result? With that antique system, it is highly unlikely that any modern browser will work (or it will take an hour to load a web page, including the home page - been there, done that, won't bother again). Older browsers probably won't get past any web site security any more either. Can you PING other systems on your network (I assume you have some)?

Doug, read all of this page and the other three pages of this thread dude.

I don't think it's necessary for you to disparage what I have to work with here. I am a man of limited means and this is what I could afford. Would I like to go out right now and buy a brand new laptop and put ArcaOS on it? You bet I would, if for no other reason than to not have to come on this forum and read your diatribes about how stupid and incompetent I am. Besides, it's just not in the budget right now and I can't justify the expense when it's only use would be to play ham radio.

I do not have any other networked systems here, why would you assume I do? I'm sure your whole house is wired with ethernet and fiber optics going to high end servers and such, but I just don't find it necessary to do so here.

Doug, me and you need to get together at some point and drink some beers. You can disparage my networking abilities and OS/2 knowledge and I can call you a Legend In Your Own Mind and a curmudgeonly know it all. Good times brother, good times. Hit me up and we'll make it happen. But, you're going to have to come down to Texas, and it'll have to be after this corona virus thing has passed over. I sincerely look forward to your company, and your insulting commentary on my incompetence.





11
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 10, 2020, 02:38:22 am »
Additional note, you don't need to reboot when you change from DHCP to fixed IPs or vice versa. setup.cmd will be started at boot up but no one prevent you from running it again from command line afterwards. Simply edit it, save it, and run it to change your IP.

I'm also confused about you're saying you can ping something although you're far away from being connected to any network. Best guess is you have pinged yourself while you've given yourself a fixed IP. Can't imagine you ever successfully pinged your WLAN access point with your current setup.

So although there are much valuable information in this thread I think you need to start with the very basics first -
1) you need a driver for your card which can be installed an configured with MPTS
2) if the driver is loaded successfully then most probably you can see a proper message about in in \ibmlan\lantran.log. Guess this works for you but it does not hurt if you post your lantran.log here.
3) if the driver loads then you need to attach a protocol with MPTS. You probably need TCP/IP only at first. It seems you managed this step successfully too.
4) after that you need to assign an IP address to your interface. It seems to me this is the place were you currently stuck. You can check with ifconfig lan0 f.i. Yes it's that simple as in other OSes. You can even do ifconfig lan0 192.168.1.100 to assing a fixed ip to your interface. But doing it within setup.cmd is the better way as long as you don't know exactly what you're doing and know the consequences. Advice - play with setup.cmd. When you setup a fixed IP then you need to rem out the DHCP line in setup.cmd of course.

These steps are all basic network stuff. Very similar in every OS. Don't play with XWLAN or wpa_supplicant before above things are work. On the other hand, if you're have a working linux wpa_supplicant.conf file for this system it will work the same on OS/2. The whole wpa_supplicant package is available even the QT frontend works on OS/2. Of course your network card have to work before and is correctly configured on OS/2. See steps 1-4.

A lot of discussion here in this thread is about 'is it really worth to play with this card'. This is an important questions you've to ask yourself. Most probably your card does not support any current security standard. Read it can not do WPA2. Not even WPA. If you ever want to connect to your wireless network you have to change the whole network to something insecure. Period. You need to decide if this is an option for you. For most people this is an absolutely no go. Hence the numerous warnings in this thread. Only if you have access to the security settings of your access point and only if you can live with the consequences of an insecure wireless network it does make any sense to play with this network card.

Andi,

As is brutally clear, I am no expert on wireless networking, but you can ping a router without having the proper encryption or a password.

I can't post a screenshot from my OS/2 system, but trust me, I pinged my router and every packet was received 100%. Why would I lie about that?

I appreciate your help and your input, but I'm not going to come onto a forum looking for help and lie about what what I am able to do and not do, I want to fix it, not regale you with my tales of brilliance and accomplishment. Which, to be honest, at this point, are few and far between.

And Andi, read my previous posts PLEASE. The card is WORKING, I have a DRIVER, I am able to ping my wifi router, don't assume I'm spinning tall tales here, why would I do that when I don't know anything about what I'm doing and I'm asking for help? I'll tell you this much, it's not because I like to get tongue lashings from every self-described expert in this forum.

To be fair, there have been a lot of very nice and helpful people here (including you) who have been sincere about wanting to help, but then there's others who want nothing more than to show off their intellect and prowess, which is typical of every forum I have ever posted in. Not necessarily including you in that group Andi, just saying. I am grateful for your input and expertise, and I realize there may be a language barrier here where I may not have correctly interpreted what you are trying to say, if this is the case then I apologize if I have offended you.

I will read over and digest what you have suggested and believe me, I am very grateful for your time and help.

Thanks,

Carl

12
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 10, 2020, 01:44:26 am »

Quote
That doesn't tell us, exactly, what it is. You need to quote the PCI ID (something like 1234:5678), which you can get by running the PCI.EXE program. It probably won't help, in this case, though.

Doug,

I posted the results from lspci.exe (I used this program because PCI.EXE is no longer available) right after you asked me to do that. If you scroll back a couple pages you will see the results.


13
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 09, 2020, 01:06:23 am »
Dumb question though, the IP of the card would be listed under "localhost", is this correct? Or does the card have it's own hardwired IP address?

Sorry for the continuous dumb questions, but I guess this is how you learn.

Thanks,

Carl

You can use ifconfig lan0 to see which IP-address was assigned to the card (and no: an IP-address is not hardwired into a card).

Have you already tried to use the setup.cmd I suggested to you?

Hi Tom,

Sorry for the delay, got caught up trying other things. But, when I followed your instructions as far as setup.cmd, on boot up I got the standard DHCPSTRT could not get any information, paraphrasing here, will try in the background, Press Enter to Continue. It gives the fail dialog box after bootup and the desktop has loaded. DHCPMON does not get any server information no DDNS host name, no IP Address, no Lease. DHCPMON just sits there with the messages:

17:56:13 Sending DISCOVER message.
17:56:13 Number of options requested = 6.

and those repeat continuously.

Let me know if there's anything else to try, but I really think this is probably a lost cause. Even if it did have some success, without my wifi password it wouldn't get very far anyway.

Just wish there was a configuration file where this could be entered, like in Linux or BSD. If I recall correctly they use a file called wpa_supplicant.conf where that info is entered. Anything like that in OS/2?

Thanks again for your help and time,

Carl

14
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 08, 2020, 07:55:38 pm »
Okay, now we are getting some information (still don't know, for sure, exactly what the device is).

Hi Doug,

The card itself is a Compaq WL 100 PCMCIA  802.11b Wifi card. Probably dates from the late '90s.


15
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 08, 2020, 07:48:16 pm »
Another thought I had this morning.  Do you know the IP address of the card?  If you do try using firefox with that address (eg. http://192.168.xxx.yyy , with xxx and yyy being specific to the card) in the address bar.  IF it allows you to connect to the card it might also allow you to get at the settings.

As Doug says it has been a long time since any of us have done much with PCMCIA cards.  For me it was 1992/1993 when I used a modem/fax card to connect to the outside world.

Thanks Ivan, I will give this a shot.

Dumb question though, the IP of the card would be listed under "localhost", is this correct? Or does the card have it's own hardwired IP address?

Sorry for the continuous dumb questions, but I guess this is how you learn.

Thanks,

Carl

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