Arachne modem base #?

[XDelusion]

Ok, I've been messing around with alternative OS's again, and this time I've decided to go back and try out FreeDOS along side with the plethora of GUI's Web Browsers and such available for it.

The problems I am having is that I am trying to set up Arachne:

http://arachne.browser.org/

for my modem. It will not auto detect, so I try to set it up manually, but I can not find the BASE Numbers that it asks for, only the IRQ and I/O numbers. Is there anywhere in winblows I can go to find out what this is?

P.S. it is not a winmodem.

[Floid]

XDelusion wrote:
Ok, I've been messing around with alternative OS's again, and this time I've decided to go back and try out FreeDOS along side with the plethora of GUI's Web Browsers and such available for it.

The problems I am having is that I am trying to set up Arachne:

http://arachne.browser.org/

for my modem. It will not auto detect, so I try to set it up manually, but I can not find the BASE Numbers that it asks for, only the IRQ and I/O numbers. Is there anywhere in winblows I can go to find out what this is?

P.S. it is not a winmodem.

Arachne's probably a little aged by now, just to warn... though I could be pleasantly wrong.  Unless there are three options there, the I/O 'base address' is just a synonym for the "I/O" port address.  (0x3F8/IRQ4 for COM1, 0x2F8/IRQ3 for COM2, 0x3E8/IRQ4 for COM3, 0x2E8/IRQ3 for COM4... but those are only 'suggested locations,' and on a modern PC, you may sometimes have to turn on 'legacy peripheral support' in the BIOS or such things to make sure the hardware appears at the old standard locations.  If it half-works, doublecheck that, as systems with PCI UARTs will do things like keep the iobase at the standard location, but use shared interrupts on something like IRQ11... which Windows can deal with, but nothing written for DOS is likely to cope.)

[XDelusion]

I'm on XP and the problem is that when I go into the Hardware manager it shows the IO as c000-c007

as opposed to something like:

 0x2E8

How do I see it in the 0X2E8 form or what ever, that is what Arachne is looking for apparently, though it calls it base.

[Floid]

XDelusion wrote:
I'm on XP and the problem is that when I go into the Hardware manager it shows the IO as c000-c007

as opposed to something like:

 0x2E8

How do I see it in the 0X2E8 form or what ever, that is what Arachne is looking for apparently, though it calls it base.

Under XP, I would suggest trying the standard COM1/COM2/COM3/COM4 options as listed, as the XP DOS emulation should 'emulate' the ports there regardless of how they 'really' map into system memory.  Note that you may have to turn on an option buried in the context menu of the DOS session's window, in the Properties of a copy of a shortcut to an emulated DOS session, or the executable itself, or maybe in the properties of the serial driver ("Allow use of serial ports," "Allow legacy something or other," "Allow use by MS-DOS sessions," something like that, depending where you find it, if it doesn't work naturally)...

As to FreeDOS, I don't rightly know, but I imagine you just won't be able to easily use the serial ports unless said legacy option is enabled in the BIOS, which would, again, place them where they belong.

(The Arachne-related software itself may or may not want the leading 0x, which is shorthand for 'this number is in hexadecimal,' YMMV.)

If you did have a WinModem, you'd be screwed under FreeDOS, and the setting to allow usage in DOS emulation would probably be in the properties for its "virtual COM port" driver, or whatever the heck.  [You 110% sure it's not a 'HCF' WinModem?  If it's PCI, there's a chance it might be.]

[XDelusion]

Ok, here is the deal. I am not running DOS inside XP, I made a new partition and dedicated it to FreeDOS:

http://www.freedos.org/

Which I dual boot with Boot Manager that came with BeOS.

I am dabling with the DOS GUI Seal:

http://sealsystem.sourceforge.net/

Along with OpenGem:

http://gem.shaneland.co.uk/

And am planning on using Arachne as the PPP Dialer and Web Browser.

Get the picture?  

(PS you can actually watch DIVX in pure DOS, not to mention burn CD's/DVD's ect!!!)

Don't ask me why, I'm just curios, I knew there was some sort of DOS cult following, and underground developement, and I wanted to check it out.

So now I need a way of finding out what those numbers are. Where can I go in XP to find this?

[Floid]

XDelusion wrote:
Ok, here is the deal. I am not running DOS inside XP, I made a new partition and dedicated it to FreeDOS:
[...]
So now I need a way of finding out what those numbers are. Where can I go in XP to find this?

Oh.  You don't.

I was misinterpreting

I'm on XP and the problem is that when I go into the Hardware manager it shows the IO as c000-c007

.

Make sure the legacy option is on in your BIOS (generally it'll even then *show* you the interrupt and legacy? base address assigned to the ports, and/or let you play with them), then try same in Arachne, end of story.  Find a copy of Telix or Telemate or Terminate to test with, probably easier.

If you have a PCI modem, not an external, this probably gets a little messier, because you probably need to play with a setup utility for the modem, not the BIOS.  For DOS usage, you want the port configured in one of the standard locations, so every program ever written making assumptions about COM1, COM2, etc can find it.  (Unless you want to use more than 2 ports at once without IRQ conflicts, and can reconfigure your software.)

[XDelusion]

Apparently my Mobo is too new, as this is the first I've owned that does not have Legacy options in the BIOS. :/

I just ran into an updated version of Arachne, turns out it went open source, and has had constant support.

I'll see if this one improves matters, if not, then I'll be back.

[Floid]

Okay, don't quote me on this, but if nothing else, the values you're seeing in Windows just might plug right in.  e.g. 0xC000 or whatnot.  Obviously the lower number is the 'base.'  I'd still be a bit nervous if the device is on a shared IRQ (with, say, a network card, or something else that's going to generate interrupts 'naturally,' possibly whether or not it's been configured), but I don't know if that's actually a concern.  The "PCI modem" documentation referenced probably applies equally to your PCI(-style) integrated UARTs.

The interesting bit from the above link:

> What, by the way are standard io addresses and irq values for internal pci
> modems? (I noticed a new help page in arachne 1.69 at
> file://doc\pcimodem.htm, which just gives an example with io d800 irq 10.

---

Again, this is sort of.. messy, because even if Arachne does it, not every piece of DOS software will give you the flexibility to even try using those values.  (Depends if you care about more than Arachne...)  There might be a FOSSIL of some sort that can make things more deterministic, but I have to admit, I never had to learn exactly how those work.

sounds like it would ease things, but it's not exactly free.