The advantages of 3Com and SMC are :-
IRQs 3,4,5 and 7 are used by COM2, COM1, LPT2 and LPT1 respectively. To allow for use of a mouse, a printer, and other serial/parallel port devices (eg. scanner, modem, portable tape backup unit), avoid these IRQs if possible. This gives the greatest flexibility for future expansion, and caters for other cards (eg. 8-bit sound cards, bi-directional parallel scanner adapters) that may only be able to use these IRQs.
If you are confident that none of the above applies, use IRQ 3 (make sure your mouse is really connected to COM1 and not COM2) or IRQ 5 (safe if you don't have a second parallel port or a sound card).
Generally we use IRQ 10, I/O address 0x280 [and RAM buffer C800-CBFF for SMC]. Problems have been known to occur with I/O address 0x300 on some PCs, since some BIOSes used this for IDE controller functions. IRQ 10 is always free unless you have additional cards installed (eg. sound card, scanner card). With SMCs remember to exclude the RAM buffer for use by Windows 3.x and other applications via the
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE X=C800-CBFFcommand in CONFIG.SYS.
Note that for Plug and Play (PnP) systems, you may need to disable PnP on the network card, as well as the system BIOS, in order for the card to work with Windows 3.x. In general, PnP only works if it is supported at three levels - the BIOS, the card, and the software.
If you need to mount Unix volumes or access lpr print queues from your PC, PCNFS is very good, though there are also several good shareware nfs clients (eg. xfs, Tsoft) and lpr clients (eg. wlpr) which will work with packet driver TCP/IP stacks. PCNFS licences are available from Prentice for $150 per PC.
If you need to access Macintosh file and print services, it is possible with Timbuktu for Windows (or Claris's Appletalk for Windows) to provide Appletalk and TCP/IP connectivity. Both these products run over an ODI stack, but you can load a TCP/IP stack via the freeware ODIPKT packet driver shim.
If you don't need any of the above, but simply need TCP/IP, for Windows 3.1 we recommend Trumpet Winsock, and for Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Microsoft's free TCP/IP-32 add-on.
If there is no local file server but the printer has an ethernet card (eg. some Apple Laserwriters, HP LaserJets), the best way is to configure the printer to "talk" TCP/IP as well as Appletalk. The PCs will need to run WLPR, the shareware lpr print spooler for Windows [this solution is due to MS and MVB]. Instead of configuring wlpr to spool to a unix print queue, it is set up to print directly to the IP address of the printer.
Finally, if neither of the above options is possible, the only way is to install Claris' Appletalk for Windows, or Farallon's Timbuktu for Windows) on the PCs. These products do work, but unfortunately they clobber Microsoft networking (ie. you cannot share files and printers with other PCs on a Microsoft network). It is still possible, however, to have a TCP/IP and an Appletalk stack on the PCs. The trick is to use NDIS/ODI drivers, and to use Novell's TCPIP stack (or ODIPKT, WINPKT and Trumpet Winsock). For more information, contact Workstation Support.
The files you need are all available from the Novell Web, gopher and ftp servers, or from dingo. You will need to get VLMUP2.EXE to obtain the latest LSL.COM (11/10/94) and IPXODI.COM (31/10/94) regardless of which shell you are running. This self extracting archive also contains ODI drivers for a number of NICs (network interface cards), as well as the latest VLMs.
You will also need the self extracting archives WINDR2.EXE and NWDLL2.EXE to get NWPOPUP.EXE, VIPX.386, VNETWARE.386, and the Netware DLLs for Windows 3.1x (NW*.DLL). Note that WINDR2.EXE also contains NETWARE.DRV and NETWARE.HLP for the VLM shell. Don't use these if you are running NETX.EXE - use the versions contained in NET33X.EXE instead.
Apart from LSL.COM, IPXODI.COM, your NIC ODI driver, and NETX or the VLMs, all of the above-mentioned files must be copied to your Windows system subdirectory.
The above-mentioned archives can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.uq.edu.au/pub/pc/net/netware/
Updating Netware drivers is also known to fix a range of other problems, including print corruption, and PCs which are acting as print servers (ie. running RPRINTER) losing their connections.
Document last revised : 4 Feb 1996 [MM]