[nos-bbs] NOS and Windows networking

[wa7nwp at jnos.org]

It's been very interesting learning about the functionality
in the airmail program.  SMTP/POP server and client, HF packet,
VHF packet, Internet forwarding, etc.   It's almost like a
minimal compile of NOS.  I'm looking forward to investigating
all the possible ways JNOS and Airmail can exchange traffic.

  http://www.airmail2000.com/

There's one big thing we can do with Airmail that can't
be done (easily) with NOS.

That is to run *NOS on a Windows system and have it be part
of the local Windows network.

There's a NDIS driver avaialable from http://www.danlan.com
that supposedly allows NOS to interact with WIndows.  I tried
it once a long time ago with not so great success.  Maybe I
needed to try harder.  Is anybody now using this as part of a
stable and long-running system?   My guess is that this would
allow a local Email client such as Eudora to pop mail from the
NOS server.

The old standby technique was to run NOS on a separabe box.  That
works well but it's extra hardware I'm trying to work around.

I've heard the best way is to install two network cards in the
PC.  Assign one to Windows and use the other exclusively for NOS.
This requires an available card slot and Interrupt.

The "Linux" solution of a running the virtual *NOS system talking
to the Linux TCP on a pseudo TTY (or now TUNL driver) may work in
Windows XP where more is availabe with virtual serial ports.

Maybe XP will work with TUNL?

Cygwin may be a future option but that still gives the problem
of how to network connect *NOS and Windows.

Any thoughts or suggestions?  Is there a good way to run a full
NOS compile on Windows so I can talk to the NOS servers with the
local Windows client programs?

Now back to brainstorming on NOSNET...

73,
Bill - WA7NWP