W98SE Internet Connection Sharing

[Ron]

Has anyone gotten this to work? I keep getting a message that the NDIS driver can't load the sharing. The driver for the NIC - AOpen AL320TX, is the latest version. Looking for any insight into this issue. TIA
Ron

Forget it, I just answered my own question. It was something basic, I forgot to load a second protocol, TC/IP gets disabled for the local network when you are using it for the internet. As soon as I enabled netbui things were fine.
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Ron. BH6 etc.


[This message has been edited by Ron (edited 09-13-1999).]

[SteveC]

I only have TCP/IP on my systems at home and the ICS works a treat - no problems at all with it.

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Cheers,
Steve

PS: Some or all of the above message may be wrong, or, just as likely, correct. Depends on what mood I'm in. And what you know. ;¬)

[Ron]

I think I spoke too soon, there are still some anomalies. Maybe I'd better go back to the SMC card while I try and work things out with the AOPen ALN320TX, I suspect the drivers are a little dodgy as yet.

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BH6-LN, 128MB PC100, C300A@450, Pan DVDwHollywood+,Pan 4X SCSI CDR, WangDAT, Quantam UDMA HDs, Fireport 40 UW, SBLive!Value (attached to bi-amped TEAC/Hitachi multimedia system), AL320TX NIC, etc. G200 Mystique as well.

[dave m]

ICS almost works ...
Under its own rules, whatever they are >-(

Under W98SE my machine now always autologs into the family network (ie never asks who I am on a reboot) and hence doesn't know my dialup password. I always have to log off as (me) then logon on as (me)(though no network password is required) and suddenly it now has my dialup password, but no auto connect.
I then click auto connect and afterwards remote machine(s) on the family network can connect to the internet with no problems... except they don't/can't disconnect my modem when it's finished.

The reason I went for W98SE rather than Wingate, I had Wingate...
(I had to ditch Wingate 3.0, everytime my wife dialled up her ISP on her phone line, Wingate would dial up my ISP on my phoneline, yet we never put Wingate on her machine)

Dave

[RAB]

I installed ICS without any problems. Just follow the instructions in the help screens.

The one drawback to it is one that is commom to all sharing programs. If you are using it on a home network and your e-mail is with an ISP and not a portal, only the primary computer can access e-mail. The other computers on the network can only access the net, not e-mail, while the primary computer is logged in. I've got four e-mail accounts with AOL and only one of us can read their mail at a time.

Another problem I ran into was that only a Win 98 SE machine can be set up as the primary. If you try installing ICS on a Win 95 machine, it tries to install all of Win 98 SE. My old Win 95 machine doesn't have room for 98, so I was unable to set up the old machine as primary.

RAB

[Ron]

Rab
I wish it was that simple. The problems I had were compounded by a BH6 mobo which just rolled over and died on me. I've replaced it with BX6r2 which is working great but nonetheless I did have to replace my AL320N nic because its drivers do not get along with ICS. I dropped in an old SMC nic with the intel chip, it works fine.

[RAB]

Ron,
Good luck. I'm sorry I made it sound so easy. I actually had problems getting my NIC working. I found it only works in the PCI slot right next to the AGP slot. SS7 busmastering limits, I guess. Too bad, since I wanted to leave this slot cover off to help cool the G200.

I went ahead and installed SPX/IPX, TCP/IP and Netbeui(sp?) so that I wouldn't have to worry about which protocol would be needed. They would all load. Also, I didn't need passwords so I set each machine for "Windows Logon".

RAB

[DentyCracker]

I initially had problems with ICS but not anymore. It seems to me that the main thing is to set up the "clients" to use DCHP (i.e. obtain ip address automatically). Once I did that I had no problems. On my machine (in my room, which I am using now)it behaves exactly as if it were connected directly to the net. It is not. It is connected directly to the machine that has the modems in it via a 10 Mbps connector. Both machines have KNE20BT (Kingston ISA Plug and Play) NICs. I just downloaded a tonload of email. Works much better than wingate ever did (2.x or 3.x) By the way bonding two modems is a good solution if your ISP supports and you can't get cable , ISDN, or ADSL. (Like us poor souls out here in Jamaica) I wonder if DirecPC works out here DirecTV certainly does. In fact the DHCP of ICS works even when I'm in Linux or BeOS. Oh and ICQ and IRC work fine as well

[This message has been edited by DentyCracker (edited 09-23-1999).]

[Frank]

I have reformatted/installed Win98se many times.
Each time is a different adventure with ICS. Sometimes it flows, sometimes it blows.
Here are some pointers I have discovered.
I am using el-cheapo PCI 10Mb SMC EZY Card. I did not have much luck with SMC drivers but the surprising thing is Win98SE detects them as PNP and installs them as Realtek RTL8029(AS) PCI Ethernet NIC. And this works just fine!
The Gateway computer will be set the IP address of 192.168.0.1 sub mask 255.255.255.0. Its bindings must include Microsoft Family Logon.
The sharing comp can be left at detect IP automatically. And they must have the Windows Family Logon client installed.
The Gateway computer creates the floppy disc to set the sharing computers up. This is not required if you make sure the above is installed and you set your IE5 to Lan and dont bother to detect proxy settings automatically.
I only need TCP/IP for this to work.
You must establish the network before doing any ICS setup and when setting up any sharing computer the gateway comp must be connected to the net and you must see the gateway computer through the lan.
Sometimes I will not see other comp when I double clik Network Neighbourhood and I will double clik again and it will work. Sometimes after setting up lan I will not see other comp until I shutdown/restart. Setting up is quite inconsistant. But once running, it is very dpendable.
If a complete listing of Network Neighbourhood settings would help just LMK and I will try to post it here with cutnpaste.

Hope this helps.
Frank.

[Helmchen]

late but

[This message has been edited by Helmchen (edited 09-24-1999).]

[Ron]

Actually, the problem with the AOpen card was that one could setup the networking fine but the moment you enabled ICS the system would hang on the bootup. This problem arose under W9X or W2K, defintely seems to be driver. Any other NIC I had, 3 different types, would work fine. The AOpen was fine as long as it was in a client machine and not the host. Simple solution, I'm currently running 6 machines, I just stuck the AOpen cards in client machines and the problems went away. A generic RealTek 10/100 card does the trick fine, best bang for your buck as it was only C$18.

[spazm_1999]

Originally posted by Frank
I am using el-cheapo PCI 10Mb SMC EZY Card. I did not have much luck with SMC drivers but the surprising thing is Win98SE detects them as PNP and installs them as Realtek RTL8029(AS) PCI Ethernet NIC. And this works just fine!

Normal since SMC EZ cards are realtek8029.... got in my pc.

I use ICS works prefectly, and if the clients are win98+ they'll auto configure after a reboot. I only had to do the config on my win95 machine. I really don't see why i sould install something else that would do the same thing with maybe 2-3 more options that i don't even need.

Spazm

[birdy]

I have ICS working without the DHCP. I specified the IP of the other machines in the same range as the ICS system then made sure that the defualt gateway and the DNS server was the ip of the ICS comp. I share the net, printer and drives from the ICS comp, all works fine with Linux, win98, 95, w2k.

You do have to be careful if you are using Zonealarm to set the ip range in security advanced settings. You need to disable the automatic lock aswell otherwise when the screensaver comes on it get really confusing until you notice.