Notes on Microchannel and OS/2 machines

This page is some collected wisdom on working with the Microchannel machines and OS/2 (TCP/IP configuration). Maybe eventually it should be split into separate pages.

Reconfiguring Microchannel machines

After changing the hardware in a microchannel machine (e.g. barney, opie, sarah, mtpilot) you can expect to receive an error at boot. I believe the code is 00174800 but I may be off by a digit. The system will usually simply want to autoconfigure based on it's newly detected (or missing hardware) and you should simply reply 'Y' when it asks to autoconfigure. It will then reboot and you should be fine.

Token ring stops working (properly) after a reconfigure

For some reason the autoconfigure sees fit to reconfigure devices you've previously reocnfigured manually. On opie and barney, the token ring cards need 32KB of ram buffer. The reconfig drops them down to 8KB. You have to hit at boot time to get into the system menu and choose system configuration and choose different configurations until you get one that has 32KB and doesn't conflict (indicated with a *) with another device. You also have to make sure routers, etc. have buffers that are big enough for their intended uses.

Error 006421

This is announcement that a loopback test failed on a device. If you don't have a cable plugged into to the network card you get this. You can just bypass it with F1.

The Tap Tool quits working in OS/2

If you try to configure the token-ring card (e.g. for TCP/IP with LAPS) on Andy (the machine running the tap tool) you may find that tap tool starts giving you errors about "program already loaded" and an error message when you actually try to trace the network. Presumably this is because there is already a device driver loaded. You have to edit config.sys and get rid of that stuff if you want to use the TapTool under OS/2. Alternatively, you can just use the tap tool under DOS. The executable is, for unknown reasons, in c:/doc/tap.exe.