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Messages - Carl Miller

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16
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 08, 2020, 03:21:39 am »
Quote
And, I have asked this question on at least two posts, where does one enter their wifi password? there's nowhere to enter it in the TCP/IP set up. Is there a configuration file where this would be entered? Wouldn't this be necessary to connect to my router even if it's encryption method is not supported by my wifi card? No one has given me a direct answer to this question.

Going back over my archives for the time when I was trying out PCMCIA cards the disks supplied with them had the driver and controller software.  It was the controller software that setup the parameters used by the card.  Since you don't appear to have that controller software you will either have to try and find it out on the net (Compaq used to have almost all of their equipment software available on an FTP server) since that is where you enter such things as passwords and other network information.

Sorry if I appeared rather hard in my last comment but I had just had a day of people complaining that their computer 'just stopped working' while not saying what they did (I've been retired for the last 5 years)

No worries Ivan, I understand where you're coming from.

As far as the software that goes with the card, I can look online for it, but I'm thinking that it probably didn't support OS/2, but being new to this who knows, I might get lucky.

Thank you for your help,

Carl

17
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 08, 2020, 02:08:29 am »
Hi Carl,

Let us go back to basics.

1) do you have the disk that came with your Compaq PCMCIA card and if so does it have an OS/2 driver on it?
2) have you installed an OS/2 driver for that card?
3) if no driver for the card is installed then you have less chance of it working than a snowball has of surviving on the streets of hell.
4) to emphasise item 3) NO WORKING DRIVER = NO WORKING WiFI no matter what you try.
5) wireless cards of any type MUST have a working driver installed before they can work.
6) all the various programs others have mentioned work through the card driver - again no driver = no wireless.

That being said IF you have an OS/2 driver and it is installed then we can try and help you.  I have 15 PCMCIA wireless cards in my junk box because they are useless to me without OS/2 drivers even though I have a couple of antique notebooks that they fit (they did work with the version of windows that was on them because there were drivers for windows)

If you want to connect to your WiFi network then use a travel router as I suggested earlier and Doug reiterated.

Please read my previous posts and my reply to Doug. I have a driver, the card works, kinda, my problem is, I guess from what has been posted previously, the card does not support the encryption method used by my wifi router. Thus, it will not connect to the internet. I can ping the router, but I cannot ping external URLs such as Google etc.

All I was wanting to know is will installing XWLAN solve this problem? I have determined, basically and indirectly, that it will NOT.

And, I have asked this question on at least two posts, where does one enter their wifi password? there's nowhere to enter it in the TCP/IP set up. Is there a configuration file where this would be entered? Wouldn't this be necessary to connect to my router even if it's encryption method is not supported by my wifi card? No one has given me a direct answer to this question.

18
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 08, 2020, 01:55:13 am »
Quote
My card doesn't support WPA2. So, I guess xwlan isn't going to help in this instance right?

Wrong. XWLAN is the program that connects WiFi to the hot spot, whether it is an open hot spot (no security), or using one of the, so called, secure connections (WEM, WPA, or WPA2). The security level, that you need, depends on how the hot spot (your router) is configured, and capable of.  The suggestion that WPA2 may not work is valid (WPA may not work either), and that can happen even if the device does support WPA or WPA2. You probably don't want to actually use the device, if it won't connect at one of those two levels. This "security" has nothing, at all, to do with buying things on the internet. It is to prevent people from logging into your router, and using it (possibly to send SPAM, or PORN, to the world). Even WEP is so easy to bypass, that any high school kid can o it in about a minute.

We need to know, exactly, what the hardware is, to make intelligent suggestions. See my previous post. Please tell us what driver you are trying to use. Without all of that information, we can only guess at what you are trying to do, and there are a lot of possibilities.

Also, seriously consider getting, and using, an external WiFi adapter (that plugs into the wired LAN connector) for security reasons, as well as connection speed, unless you are doing this just for laughs. They are not very expensive, and will work a whole lot better than some antique PCMCIA card ever could. If you are doing this for laughs, READ every word in the documentation, at least three times, then ask questions about what you don't understand. There is no easy way to figure this out, and the solution may be completely different, for different hardware, and driver, combinations. It is also very likely that your hardware simply has no driver.

Ok, let me state again, I am using a Dell Inspiron 3200 laptop roughly 1998 vintage. I am using a PCMCIA wifi card, a Compaq WL 100. The driver I am using for it is genprism.2.0rc4. The card is active and recognized by the system. Using DHCP does not work, however, if I use manual mode with a static IP the card will successfully ping my Wifi router. It WILL NOT ping external URLs such as Google etc. This card is old, it does not support WPA/WPA2 which is what is used by my wifi router (Xfinity/Comcast).

For the PCMCIA bus driver I am using the dell.exe driver which I downloaded from the OS2Site repository. Sorry, I don't have any further info on the Card bus driver. It is equivalent roughly to the IBM PlayatWill driver.

Let me also state that I am not doing this for shits and giggles. I use the OS/2 system with my amateur radio set up and I take it seriously. I wanted a reliable os that I could depend on and that had DOS capability. I'm not doing this to pass the time or just to play around. Having internet access would be helpful for logging, QSLing etc. instead of having to transfer data over to my main system on a CD to log or to QSL from.

This laptop does NOT have a LAN or ethernet port, I suppose this could be remedied with a PCMCIA NIC card and then I could add the adapter you mentioned.

So, will XWLAN work or not? If not then I guess I need to start searching for the NIC pc card and the wifi adapter you mentioned.

Tell me directly what you want to know, or see, and I will do my best to get it for you. I'm not asking anybody to figure this out for me, I just need guidance and information, it's all I'm asking for. I know you didn't start out with something different from day one and know all the answers did you?


19
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 07, 2020, 05:16:19 pm »
I know installing xwlan (package includes the xcenter widget and wlanstat.exe the stand alone application) which needs dhcpclient and wpa_supplicant, isn't that easy. Especially without internet access.

That's the reason I suggested to check the basics first. Only if you're sure your card supports WPA2 (which I doubt) or only if you're really sure you would like to change your whole wireless network to the insecure WEP standard, then it's worth to start looking at xwlan.

Hi Andi,

My card doesn't support WPA2. So, I guess xwlan isn't going to help in this instance right?

My other option was to use the wifi hotspot feature on my wireless router. I'm not sure if that uses any kind of encryption or not. Since I'm not going to use internet access to buy stuff online or pass any personal info I think it will be fine for that if I can access it. This feature is separate from the secure access on my normal wifi access.

What do you guys think??

Thanks,

Carl

20
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 07, 2020, 01:09:35 am »
Hi Carl, there's both the Xworkplace widget and a standalone program. I use the Widget.
Xworkplace is here, https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/apps/wps/xworkplace/xwp-1-0-13-full-en.exe for the full version, or the light version, https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/apps/wps/xworkplace/xwp-1-0-13-lite-en.exe, a handy extension to the WPS. It is supplied with ArcaOS (and previously eCS) as a rebranded version
The dhcp client is available as a zip here, http://rpm.netlabs.org/release/00/zip/dhcp-3_1-3_oc00.zip, not sure if it has dependencies.
The newest libc is here, http://rpm.netlabs.org/release/00/zip/libc-0_6_6-40_oc00.zip.
Be careful with it as it includes forwarder DLLs. Make sure they are the only ones on LIBPATH. You may have older ones already installed which will need moving out of the way.
Hopefully that is all the dependencies. To be honest, I've never installed it on 4.52, it has always been installed with eCS or ArcaOS while installing.

LOL, well Dave that's kind of an important oversight there! Just kidding, I'm sure it'll be fine. If not then I'll just go in a different direction.

Thanks for your help,

Carl

21
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 06, 2020, 11:12:09 pm »
You need the wlan program that I linked to above. It is the successor to WifiState.exe and works fine on my T42

Hi Dave,

I installed wlan, but on reading the help file, there are some prerequisites that need to be met. Maybe you can advise me on a couple as far as where to download them. I don't have internet access on the OS/2 computer so RPM is right out. It says I need XWorkplace or EWorkplace, which would I use for OS/2 Warp 4.52? I also need ISC DHCP client from RPM download, but no internet access, will need to download it on my main computer and transfer it. The other thing I need is Runtime Library V0.6.5-csd5, and I would need to download it from my main computer also. I was able to download GenMac 2.0 as well as Warpin.

Any advice on this would be helpful.

Thanks,

Carl

22
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 06, 2020, 08:44:35 pm »
Still, I have no idea where to put my wifi password. Probably why DHCP is failing and cant ping any websites. Is there a configuration file somewhere where this information would be contained???
You need to know which sort of encryption your wireless network uses. Today usually WPA2. And you need to know if your card supports this encryption. Guess it's a very old card and maybe it only supports WEP. If your card does not support the encryption standard your network uses then you can't connect. Suggest you check this basic things before trying out other things.

Hi Andi,

You are probably right, my PC card is very old and it probably doesn't support WPA2. Looking at my wifi properties on my newer Windows laptop, the encryption is WPA2-Personal. Don't know but I guess I'm pretty much out of luck here. Might have to look into other options.

23
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 06, 2020, 08:19:37 pm »
Hi Tom,

The contents of resolv2:

nameserver 75.75.75.75
nameserver 75.75.76.76
domain ceemill

The contents of setup.cmd:

route -fh
REM arp -f
ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1
REM ifconfig lan0 10.0.0.232 netmask 255.255.255.0
REM ifconfig lan1 metric 1 mtu 1500
REM ifconfig lan2 metric 1 mtu 1500
REM ifconfig lan3 metric 1 mtu 1500
REM ifconfig lan4 metric 1 mtu 1500
REM ifconfig lan5 metric 1 mtu 1500
REM ifconfig lan6 metric 1 mtu 1500
REM ifconfig lan7 metric 1 mtu 1500
dhcpstrt -i lan0
REM ifconfig sl0
route add default 10.0.0.232 -hopcount 1
ipgate off

Let me know if you need more info and thanks for your help

Carl

You told Dariusz that you are using manual configuration, since you couldn't get DHCP to work. Yet your setup.cmd says that you are using DHCP (the line with dhcpstrt), and not manual configuration (there is a REM at the start of the line ifconfig lan0).
On the other hand there is a line with route add default, which is not needed with DHCP.

I would suggest that you make a backup of your current setup.cmd, and then create a new setup.cmd with the following contents:

route -fh
arp -f
ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1
dhcpstrt -i lan0 -d 0

After you finished booting, use DHCPMON : it gives you information about the success or failure of starting your network connection using DHCP. You can toggle between more or less detail by pressing F5 on your keyboard. Also useful is the button "Current configuration" at the bottom of the DHCPMON window.

You can also try pinging the two nameservers listed in your resolv2. That will tell you if you can reach those name servers or not (they do respond to ping requests - I just tried on my own machine).

Hi Tom,

The reason for the dhcp entry is because I was trying a lot of different things and I guess that was the last entry when I accessed the contents of the file. But yeah, dhcp doesn't work no matter what I do. I will give the setup.cmd file re-do a try though.

Thanks,
Carl

24
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 06, 2020, 08:12:24 pm »
You need the wlan program that I linked to above. It is the successor to WifiState.exe and works fine on my T42

Hi Dave,

Didn't mean to ignore your suggestion, I am going to give this a go. I might need some help as I'm a noob when it comes to setting this up on OS/2. Will try not to worry you to death.  :D

25
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 06, 2020, 12:51:53 am »
Still, I have no idea where to put my wifi password. Probably why DHCP is failing and cant ping any websites. Is there a configuration file somewhere where this information would be contained???

26
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 06, 2020, 12:38:48 am »
Hi Tom,

The contents of resolv2:

nameserver 75.75.75.75
nameserver 75.75.76.76
domain ceemill

The contents of setup.cmd:

route -fh
REM arp -f
ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1
REM ifconfig lan0 10.0.0.232 netmask 255.255.255.0
REM ifconfig lan1 metric 1 mtu 1500
REM ifconfig lan2 metric 1 mtu 1500
REM ifconfig lan3 metric 1 mtu 1500
REM ifconfig lan4 metric 1 mtu 1500
REM ifconfig lan5 metric 1 mtu 1500
REM ifconfig lan6 metric 1 mtu 1500
REM ifconfig lan7 metric 1 mtu 1500
dhcpstrt -i lan0
REM ifconfig sl0
route add default 10.0.0.232 -hopcount 1
ipgate off

Let me know if you need more info and thanks for your help

Carl

27
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 05, 2020, 11:04:40 pm »
Hi Dariusz,

my result with tracerte is : uknown host www.google.com

I am using manual configuration as I couldn't get DHCP to work.

I have another question, where do you enter the wifi password when setting up TCP/IP? I didn't see anywhere to enter it in the setup. That might be my whole problem. Guess I should've asked that to start with  ;D


28
Utilities / Re: WifiState.exe
« on: July 05, 2020, 09:39:34 pm »
Hi Doug,

My wifi card is a Compaq WL 100.

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)

I noticed it didn't read my PC card, don't know if it's supposed to, but it did see the PCMCIA slots. The wifi card was inserted when I ran this. It listed a few other items such as Host Bridge, VGA compatible controller, Bridge, IDE interface, USB Controller etc. Not sure if any of those would be useful in this case.

Let me know if you need more info and thanks for your help,

Carl

29
Utilities / WifiState.exe
« on: July 05, 2020, 07:15:43 pm »
Anyone know where I can download wifistate.exe for OS/2, or something similar to set up wifi? Using OS/2 4.52 on an old Dell laptop with a Compaq WL 100 PCMCIA card. The card is working and I can ping my wifi router, but cant seem to ping any websites. I went through the TCP/IP setup but I probably did something wrong. Total noob here.

30
Hardware / Re: OS/2 4.52 Freezes Loading Desktop
« on: April 26, 2020, 01:26:38 am »
shutdown started working again, I guess it just needed a rest  ;D

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