Description:

Under Win95, the WinSock interface has to be used to access the network protocols. As FlexNet runs within the so called System-VM (and thus within a DOS environment) it has no direct access to this interface. ETHER32 performs as a coupling device between FlexNet and the WinSock services. The Win32 side of this coupling is done by a process called "FlexNet Control Center", which is automatically launched after the 32bit kernel of Windows has been booted. For this the FLEXCTL.EXE program must be installed into the FlexNet directory, and the PATH environment variable must point to this directory. The coupling will only work while the FLEXCTL.EXE is running.

WARNING: This applies only if the Win32 environment is running, i.e. if you only boot DOS7 or run the computer in MS-DOS mode, FLEXCTL.EXE (which is a Win32 application) cannot be started and ETHER32 will consequently fail!

Having this is mind the installation and configuration of ETHER32 is rather easy: The driver needs to be installed like any other FlexNet L1 driver, operating parameters are passed via the commandline. You can reconfigure each ETHER32-channel with the ETH32CFG utility while FlexNet is running (even from a DOS-Box under Windows), however you cannot change the channel count. Modifications made with ETH32CFG are not saved beyond a restart of FlexNet.

The driver must only be loaded ONCE, even if more than one channel is to be used. The driver will prevent itself from beeing activated in a second instance. As the WinSock interface is used, the protocols requested through ETHER32 need to be installed and properly configured. That is: You need to install the TCP/IP services of Win95 if you want to use AXIP, and IPX if you want to use IPX, respectively. As usual, AXIP channels are Point-To-Point and IPX uses ethernet broadcast, resembling a "real" radio channel.

To pinpoint an important fact: ETHER32 needs a properly configured WinSock32 interface, 16bit WinSock implementations like TrumpetWinsock will not work at all. They should not be used with Windows95 anyway, and you`re asking for trouble if you do!

ATTENTION: AXIP_RAW (i.e. "real" AXIP) isn't supported yet, thus for linking to other stations via AXIP you need to use UDP encapsulation (AXIP_UDP). For UDP, the destination port number may be set (and reset using ETH32CFG). The receiver port number is hardcoded to 93. AXIP_RAW will be supported as soon as we find out how to utilize this feature through WinSock (read: maybe never).

Commandline parameters:
ETHER32 [/c=]<channel count> {/n<channel>=<mode>[,<arguments>]}
with <mode>=IPX|AXIP|AXIP_UDP
Example:
ETHER32 /c=3 /n0=IPX /n1=AXIP,192.168.1.1 /n2=AXIP_UDP,192.168.1.2:4719
FlexNet parameters:
not applicable