CBIS Desk To Desk driver info?

I just put FreeDOS on an old computer going into a business that still uses
DOS stations for their networked main business application. But the
software documentation and installation disks are missing. All the new
owner has is these stations and whatever is running on the hard drives.

The problem is with the network setup. The network software is Desk To
Desk, a client-server product for small networks made by CBIS, which went
bankrupt in 1994. I have figured out how to use the installation program
from an existing directory on the hard drive, but have not been able to
successfully configure for the installed network card, which is a popular
vintage 3Com ISA card, the 3C509 (but which is not specified to be NE-2000
compatible).

I would like to be able to figure out more about what existing drivers to
select for various cards, and ideally I would like to figure out how to
manually use a driver other than the ones offered in their setup list.
(Unlike the MS-DOS Network Client, they don't offer an option to manually
install a driver (NDIS2) not offered natively.) I have just a few clues to
go on. The setup routine refers to their drivers as NetBIOS drivers. The
list of drivers offered by Setup is thus: 3C503, 3C523, ARCSM, BUSS,
BUSS-MC, GENERIC, N-ETHER, NE-2000. The installed driver for any selection
is an EXE (e.g. NXNE2000.EXE). The instructions for how to choose a driver
for a given card is in the lost document "Appendix A of the System
Administrator Manual."

I hope to find out that they were not doing something completely proprietary
at the driver level!

Can anyone shed further light on this situation?

--John Hupp

On Fri, 04 Aug 2006 00:39:55 GMT, "John Hupp"
<news.sbcglobal.chi.TakeThisOut@prpcompany.com> put finger to keyboard and
composed:

>I just put FreeDOS on an old computer going into a business that still uses
>DOS stations for their networked main business application. But the
>software documentation and installation disks are missing. All the new
>owner has is these stations and whatever is running on the hard drives.
>
>The problem is with the network setup. The network software is Desk To
>Desk, a client-server product for small networks made by CBIS, which went
>bankrupt in 1994. I have figured out how to use the installation program
>from an existing directory on the hard drive, but have not been able to
>successfully configure for the installed network card, which is a popular
>vintage 3Com ISA card, the 3C509 (but which is not specified to be NE-2000
>compatible).
>
>I would like to be able to figure out more about what existing drivers to
>select for various cards, and ideally I would like to figure out how to
>manually use a driver other than the ones offered in their setup list.
>(Unlike the MS-DOS Network Client, they don't offer an option to manually
>install a driver (NDIS2) not offered natively.) I have just a few clues to
>go on. The setup routine refers to their drivers as NetBIOS drivers. The
>list of drivers offered by Setup is thus: 3C503, 3C523, ARCSM, BUSS,
>BUSS-MC, GENERIC, N-ETHER, NE-2000. The installed driver for any selection
>is an EXE (e.g. NXNE2000.EXE). The instructions for how to choose a driver
>for a given card is in the lost document "Appendix A of the System
>Administrator Manual."
>
>I hope to find out that they were not doing something completely proprietary
>at the driver level!
>
>Can anyone shed further light on this situation?
>
>--John Hupp

I'm a networking novice, but I would look for entries in autoexec.bat,
config.sys, *.ini, *.cfg, etc. Look for files having the same dates as
the original system build date, ie files with the same date as the DOS
directory.

dir c:\ /s | find "mm-dd-yy" > filelist.txt

Otherwise, a hex dump of the installation program may reveal some
useful text strings. I don't know about FreeDOS, but the following
command works in Win9x DOS:

edit /r /64 install_program

- Franc Zabkar
--
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