Using a TCP/IP stack from DOS with TurboPascal?

[fsteff]

Hi,
Browsing thrugh this site, I hope to have hit the right spot to ask for help.

I have a pretty old set of software, with turbo pascal source (More then 50.000 lines of code - too much to quickly recode in another language/OS), running on a DOS machine. The software monitors a lot of custom hardware, and requires direct hardware-access.
I have a NE-2000 compatible ethernet card connected to the machine, too.
My task ahead, is to network-enable the software on this machine. (Basically, I'll be replacing the RS232 routines.)

My problem is that it's been impossible for me to find any documentation about how to use Turbo Pascal to use any TCP/IP stack.

I bought the DR-DOS developer-kit, as it looked like an easy route, but it turned out to just be a DOS with a TCP/IP stack, and no documentation available as to how to make programs for it. The demo-programs, like the ftp-server etc. works without problems, I just need more.

Then I looked at the boot-disks at bootdisk.com, and thought perhaps they would be able to help me, but again I can't find any information about how to use Pascal to interact with the stack.

I have access to most versions of MS-DOS (with network-support), the latest version of DR-DOS, all versions of Windows, as well as access to Turbo Pascal and Delphi if any of them will be of help to solve the task.

Basically, what I need is to do, is to enable each of the old programs (running in parallel) to listen to a specific port, and when certain command-packets are recieved, they should answer back.
The DOS enviroment can change very much, as the programs does not rely on DOS for anything but time and file-access. (I have used MS-DOS 3.2 and 6.22, aswell as DR-DOS without problems.)

I hope this description covers pretty much what I need, and I hope some of you guys have some good advice, or perhaps examples for me, that will aide me to a good result.

Please ask if I neglected some important details, or if something was not described clearly enough.

Best regards,
Fsteff

 

[Glenn9999]

The first step would be locating a good TCP-IP stack you can run as a driver on top of DOS. Have you done that?

 

[fsteff]

Hi Glenn9999,

As mentioned in my first post, I have the TCP/IP stack included with DR-DOS. (It appears to be based on some Novell Netware stack.)
Using this stack, and the included tools, such as a ping command and a simple ftp-server, I know that the stack and network card is functioning.
An alternative to the DR-DOS stack, would be the stack included with the networked version of MS-DOS. I haven't tried it, but I'm fairly sure I could still find the disks in the archives somewere.
I'd like to use the DR-DOS stack, as I have it ready right now - but it seems to be pretty hard to find documentation for any stack running in a pure DOS mode.

Regards.

 

[Glenn9999]

It looks like this critter is promising and should help what you're looking to do - or at least get you some hints.

http://www.brain.uni-freiburg.de/~klaus/pascal/tcpip/

 

[fsteff]

Hi Glen999,

I've allready looked there. It's a complete TCP/IP stack on its own, and it's not compatible with other stacks. It's also PPP only, meaning it will function only with serial connections over modems (it has its own dailer, too). There is also no code for ethernet interfaces.

So even if it looks good, it's not useable. :-(