set up TCP networking on Windows 95

[jmelson]

Hello, all, I just got in a Quad pick and place machine that runs Win 95 on the management computer.  It came with a 3Com Ethernet card, but was configured for a Windows workgroup.  I need to set it up for TCP/IP networking.  It has been ages since I messed with Win 95, so I don't remember how to do it.

The specific card is a 3C905B-TXNM

Win95 seems to recognize the card and load drivers for it.  Before I tinkered with it, the 100 mbit green LED lit up.  Now, it doesn't light up.  I get a 10043 error when I try to ping.

I have gone into the settings / network menu and set the IP address, netmask and gateway address.  I don't need DNS just to access the local network addresses.

Also, can anybody recommend a program that serves files by FTP from the Win95 system?  I had something years ago that worked on another Win 95 system, but it was very klunky.  And, I doubt I could find it on the web anymore.

Thanks,

Jon

[Whales]

The error code 10043 indicates that the TCP/IP stack is not initializing.

This error can occur if you have TCP/IP files with a .386 extension in your Windows folder from the
Windows for Workgroups 32-bit TCP/IP stack.

http://ftp.uma.es/Drivers/TRED/3COM/3C90XX/DOC/TCPI0043.HTM

[Ian.M]

'Back in the day' I used WARFTPD.  Various websites still have it downloadable.  I believe the version that was current back in the Win95 era was 1,65.  I don't know how much up-version you can go and stiil run on Win9x.

[jmelson]

The error code 10043 indicates that the TCP/IP stack is not initializing.

This error can occur if you have TCP/IP files with a .386 extension in your Windows folder from the
Windows for Workgroups 32-bit TCP/IP stack.

http://ftp.uma.es/Drivers/TRED/3COM/3C90XX/DOC/TCPI0043.HTM

Thanks, I checked for this, and the files named were not in \windows, but were all present in \windows\system, as the discussion said they should be.

I tried to get a CDROM drive installed, but it couldn't find the drivers for that, either.  I did put the drive in a Linux computer and loaded
3c90x1.exe on the disk, ran it and then tried to install the drivers, but it had a hundred dll files it could not find.

I was able to back up the critical files from the machine while I was doing this, so at least that is taken care of.

Thanks,

Jon

[Whales]

I was able to back up the critical files from the machine while I was doing this, so at least that is taken care of.

 

Even if it's not in perfect state: it's also worth imaging the disk.  Just in case it has some magic for the PnP that you can't replicate by other means.

[Ian.M]

OEM network card drivers for Win95 don't include the protocol stacks, as those are part of the OS.   Installing the win95 TCP/IP stack requires a *LOT* of files from the Win95 install media.  After the first couple of times I had to root through the stack of 1680K DMF format floppies Win95 initially came on, to add hardware or drivers, I learnt to avoid misery by initially copying all the install files to C:\INSTALL\WIN95 and running Win95 setup from there.  You could also make a directory for the install files on an existing system, and when adding hardware or software components, point it at them when it started asking for disks, but unless you did some deep delving into the registry, IIRC it always defaulted to checking the original install media location first.

I suspect that if you'd provided Win95 media rather than a 3Com disk, you could have simply added TCP/IP to the existing adapter driver, and removed  NetBEUI.   

Caution: your Win95 install files need to be from the correct version.  In addition to national language variations, the original and OSR2 releases differ significantly. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#Editions