WinPack and PC Flexnet ---------------------- Introduction ------------ First a disclaimer - my current knowledge of PC Flexnet is very slight. (If anyone who has a good knowledge of Flexnet gets WinPack working with it, feel free to update this document and send me a copy!) I implemented support for Flexnet in WinPack because I had seen a lot of comments about it, and I wanted to see what it did. I must say that I am very impressed with it and I hope that the support for it in WinPack encourages more people in the UK to give it a try. I cannot support Flexnet - I don't know enough about it. You should regard obtaining and setting up Flexnet as a separate task to getting it to work with WinPack. These notes aren't intended as instructions, they are intended as guidance to help you in your *experimentation*. Flexnet is available from:- http://dl0td.afthd.th-darmstadt.de/~flexnet/ The link "An Introduction to Flexnet" from the index page gives a good overview of Flexnet and the concepts behind it. If you are lucky enough to have a local Flexnet node, then your node sysop may well be able to help you, or another local radio amateur may be able to supply you with a copy. To use Flexnet with WinPack, you must obtain a recent version which has support for Win95, I am using V3.3f. ***** PLEASE NOTE FLEXNET DOES NOT SUPPORT WIN31 - IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A PC WITH WIN95 ON IT, YOU CANNOT USE FLEXNET WITH WINPACK *****. PC Flexnet runs underneath Win95 and puts a significant load on the processor, I would say that a 486/DX2 and 16Mb is a minimum for using it with WinPack. Loading PC Flexnet ------------------ How to load Flexnet is fully covered in the Flexnet docs, I am not going to cover that here, except to say that the stages are:- 1. Load FLEXNET - the kernel. 2. Load your drivers. 3. Activate the kernel with FLEX. 4. Load any other required modules. 5. Run FSET as required for your drivers. This version of WinPack interfaces to Flexnet via TFEMU - the TFPCX emulator. It is recommended that you use TFEMU with DRSI style interrupts (tfemu -dx), because it is a little more efficient than using the default TFPCX style interrupts. However, WinPack will detect which type of interrupts are being used. It will also find TFEMU, even if the "-i" flag is used to assign TFEMU to a software interrupt other than the default of FDh, so you don't need to tell WinPack which interrupt number is being used. As an example, here is the BAT file I have been using on my test system. I haven't used all these drivers at the same time, but I've put them all in as examples of what I have successfully used. The minimum is that you must load flexnet, you must load and configure one driver, you must run flex, and, for use with WinPack, you must load TFEMU. (You can use "lh" to load the drivers high, but on my PC loading flexnet high uses up all the available upper memory.) REM load the kernel. lh flexnet REM load the Baycom modem driver for my COM3. REM this will be channel 0. ser12 /p=0x3e8 /i=5 REM load the sound card driver - using LPT2 for the PTT. REM this will be channel 1. smsbc /tl:0x378 REM load 6PACK to drive two TNCs in a ring on my COM4. REM these will be channels 2 and 3. 6pack 4 /b=19200 /c=2 /p=0x2e8 /i=9 REM load the ethernet driver. REM this will be channel 4. ether32 /c=1 /n0:ipx REM activate the kernel. flex REM load the 1200 baud sound card modem module. smafsk12 REM set the mode and txd for channels 0, 1, 2 and 3. fset mode 0 1200c fset txd 0 50 fset mode 1 1200 fset txd 1 50 fset mode 2 1200 fset txd 2 50 fset mode 3 1200 fset txd 3 50 REM set the sound card (SB16) input to line, REM and set the input and output gain. smmixer /s:line /il18 /ir18 /ol-25 /or-25 REM load TFEMU with DRSI interrupts and TFPCX port numbers. tfemu -dx Testing PC Flexnet ------------------ To test Flexnet without using WinPack, I used BCT.EXE V1.60u, which I downloaded from the Flexnet web site, in a DOS Window in Win95. If you have more than one channel, don't forget that Flexnet expects the channel to be specified after the callsign, so, to connect to G8MZX via channel 1, it's "C G8MZX 1". SER12 Problems -------------- The docs for SER12 say " Note: Problems have been reported running ser12 on some notebooks and some state-of-the-art computer mainboards with onboard UARTs. It seems that some brand of I/O controllers lack special features that are needed for the ser12 driver to perform properly." So far I have tested it with three PCs and I have found that it does not work at all well either with the 16550 UARTs in the Triton chipset of my Pentium PC motherboard or with a 16550 UART on an expansion card. It works fine with 8250 UARTs on expansion cards. Running WinPack with PC Flexnet ------------------------------- ***** Have you got TFEMU loaded?? ***** ***** Have you tested Flexnet from a DOS Window?? ***** Run WinPack, use "Options", "Comms Setup", and set "Host mode" to "TFEMU". Click "Ok". There will be a delay of several seconds whilst WinPack initialises the host mode and sets some TF parameters. If WinPack can't find TFEMU, it will give you an error message. Assuming that WinPack managed to load, pressing will give you a prompt from the WinPack virtual TNC. If you input "?" you will get a list of the available virtual TNC commands. Help on each command is available with e.g. "?MON". Please note that several of the commands are not available when using TFEMU and will not be accepted if you try to use them. TFEMU commands not supported by the virtual TNC can be input using the "RAW" command. Click "Help", "Help Contents", "Host Mode Support" and read the the on-line help. The host mode help also covers using WinPack with a TNC with TF or WA8DED firmware in it, so ignore all references to the TNC - your TNC is controlled by Flexnet, noy by WinPack. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU READ the comment in "Enabling Host Mode" about setting "BBS_UNPROTO=to FBB" in PACKET.INI. Have fun! Roger Barker, G4IDE roger@peaksys.demon.co.uk September 1997