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mr

14.12.2008, 01:17
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP? (Users)

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I found two new brwosers, very unknown. Anyone know them? Anyone using them?

- NetTamer: http://www.nettamer.net/tamer.html - couldn't find much else about this browser, not even a single screenshot. Dunno if this browser is worth better then lynx/Arachne? SSL? Any opinions?
When I try to start NetTammer or reader before I get always "internal error", no matter if I start on bare metal, VMware or DOSBox.

- DR WebSpyder: here is a review: http://www.itreviews.co.uk/software/s45.htm - imho looks good and the review sounds good. The demo of WebSpyder makes a really good impression, rendering the offline html is much faster then Arachne, even faster then lynx and also faster then Firefox/Opera. I think this browser is worth a try online.

WebSpyder doesn't work for me in VMware (graphic error, not important), but in DOSBox and on bare metal (most important ofc).

Currently I am mainly interested in WebSpyder.

The two browser have only built in modem dial up for analog line or ISDN.

But I connect with ADSL, router, network card and packet driver. No reason to switch back to 56 K or ISDN (very slow and expensive).

Can I get somehow a "virtual modem" for this software so I can use in reality with my ADSL connection?
Rugxulo

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Usono,
14.12.2008, 03:03

@ mr
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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> I found two new brwosers, very unknown. Anyone know them? Anyone using
> them?
>
> - NetTamer: http://www.nettamer.net/tamer.html - couldn't find much else
> about this browser, not even a single screenshot. Dunno if this browser is
> worth better then lynx/Arachne? SSL? Any opinions?
> When I try to start NetTammer or reader before I get always "internal
> error", no matter if I start on bare metal, VMware or DOSBox.
I think it's old shareware, and not sure how good it is. But I've never tried it. (AFAIK, the only DOS browser supporting SSL is Doug Kaufman's DOSLynx.)

> - DR WebSpyder: here is a review:
> http://www.itreviews.co.uk/software/s45.htm - imho looks good and the
> review sounds good. The demo of WebSpyder makes a really good impression,
> rendering the offline html is much faster then Arachne, even faster then
> lynx and also faster then Firefox/Opera. I think this browser is worth a
> try online.
 >
> WebSpyder doesn't work for me in VMware (graphic error, not important),
> but in DOSBox and on bare metal (most important ofc).
Also never tried this (didn't come with my copy of DR-DOS 7.03, at least), but I'm pretty sure people will tell you that it's based upon an old version of Arachne. The latest Arachne v195;GPL is supposed to be pretty fast. Of course, it's probably the last from Glenn McCorkle too. :-(

> Currently I am mainly interested in WebSpyder.
I think latest Arachne or DOS ports of links or DOSLynx might be better supported.

> The two browser have only built in modem dial up for analog line or ISDN.
>
> But I connect with ADSL, router, network card and packet driver. No reason
> to switch back to 56 K or ISDN (very slow and expensive).
>
> Can I get somehow a "virtual modem" for this software so I can use in
> reality with my ADSL connection?
I suspect rr will know more about this. Sadly, I have no clue.
mr

14.12.2008, 03:24

@ Rugxulo
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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> Also never tried this (didn't come with my copy of DR-DOS 7.03, at least),
> but I'm pretty sure people will tell you that it's based upon an old
> version of Arachne. The latest Arachne v195;GPL is supposed to be
> pretty fast. Of course, it's probably the last from Glenn McCorkle too.
> :-(
It's much faster then latest Arachne but right now I couldn't make a realistic test. WebSpyder seams to use Allegro as backend (I did read this as I did press press secure attention key).

It doesn't look like Arachne and it doesn't feel like Arachne and Arachne has nothing to do with Allegro. You sure?

> > Currently I am mainly interested in WebSpyder.
>
> I think latest Arachne or DOS ports of links or DOSLynx might be better
> supported.
Them are at least known.
mht

Homepage

Wroclaw, Poland,
14.12.2008, 11:15

@ mr
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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DR-WebSpyder is really based on an old version of Arachne. As far as I know, Caldera bought licence from Arachne's author, and they added some features (as limited JavaScript support and some improvements in HTML rendering). They also compiled everything with DJGPP using Allegro for graphics; Arachne is a 16-bit Real Mode application built with Borland C++ 3.1 (and written in C, not C++), using a proprietary graphics library from Arachne Labs. When you look at directory stuctures of both browsers' installations, you can clearly see the similarities. The user interface is also very similar, just icons and fonts (unfortunately, ISO-8859-1 only, while Arachne comes with several internationalization packages) are different.

While DR-WebSpyder might be sometimes faster (because it is 32-bit and does not have to constantly swap memory using XMS, EMS or disk, as Arachne does -- anyway, from my impressions, later Arachne versions were actually faster than WebSpyder), its limited JavaScript seems to be rather useless nowadays, and Arachne improved a lot its HTML rendering, stability and other features since the release of WebSpyder, and it is much more usable.

Anyway, I suceesfully used Arachne on a few computers with ISA and PCI Ethernet cards (and WebSpyder worked there as well), and once using an external modem on COM port. Most often I used Novell ODI drivers and PKT2ODI converter (it comes included with WebSpyder) to provide Packet Driver interface for Arachne and a few other applications (as FTP or SSH) while still being able to use Personal NetWare client/server to share files between my notebook and two desktop PCs (all were running DR-DOS 7.03).

I think thay you should find a way to establish a connection before you start Arachne/WebSpyder, so that either Packet Driver or ODI API would be available. There is also a way to provider Packet Driver API over NDIS (used by Microsoft LAN client), though I have never used it.
mht

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Wroclaw, Poland,
14.12.2008, 11:18

@ mht
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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About DHCP: Although at that time I had fixed public IP addressed both at work and at home, I could use DHCP as well and it worked fine with Arachne; I do not remember whether DR-WebSpyder worked with DHCP.
mr

14.12.2008, 18:24

@ mht
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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> About DHCP: Although at that time I had fixed public IP addressed both at
> work and at home, I could use DHCP as well and it worked fine with
> Arachne; I do not remember whether DR-WebSpyder worked with DHCP.
Afaik the external/public IP doesn't matter as it's up to the router to obtain the IP form the ISP.

The internal LAN IP is the thing to care about I think.
mr

14.12.2008, 19:36

@ mht
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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I've read http://lazybrowndog.net/freedos/
a very nice guide about the whole networking thing in DOS.

> Most often I used Novell ODI drivers and
> PKT2ODI converter (it comes included with WebSpyder) to provide Packet
> Driver interface for Arachne and a few other applications (as FTP or SSH)
> while still being able to use Personal NetWare client/server to share
> files between my notebook and two desktop PCs (all were running DR-DOS
> 7.03).
Sounds also logical to me. First you start a ODI driver and then the PKT2ODI. This way you can use both NetWare and TCP/IP.

If you would want only to use Arachne and you would have a packet driver it would be ok only to load a packet driver.

In my case I have all 3, ODI drivers are available, NDIS and a packet driver. (SiS 900 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter, onboard chip, real). As for VMware it's a AMD Am79C970, I found a working packer driver from Crynwr (working for lynx and Arachne) and a NDIS2 driver from AMD, haven't looked yet for an ODIS but I think I don't need one.

If I understood this right this pkt2odi is only needed if you have only a ODI driver for your NIC and need to have a packet driver replacement for example for Arachne.

> I think thay you should find a way to establish a connection before you
> start Arachne/WebSpyder, so that either Packet Driver or ODI API would be
> available. There is also a way to provider Packet Driver API over NDIS
> (used by Microsoft LAN client), though I have never used it.
I think I do not need to fight with this NDIS and ODI stuff as I have working packet drivers?

The packet drivers are working.

But WebSpyder and NetTamer seams to want to dial with a dial up modem which is not available?

The question is how to get a converter from packet driver to dial up modem for satisfying dialer.exe.
mht

Homepage

Wroclaw, Poland,
14.12.2008, 21:05

@ mr
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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> If I understood this right this pkt2odi is only needed if you have only a
> ODI driver for your NIC and need to have a packet driver replacement for
> example for Arachne.
Exactly. The packet driver alone uses much less memory.

> But WebSpyder and NetTamer seams to want to dial with a dial up modem
> which is not available?
>
> The question is how to get a converter from packet driver to dial up modem
> for satisfying dialer.exe.
I have no idea about NetTamer -- maybe it works with dial-up connection only. But your DR-WebSpyder is simply improperly configured. I will look at my old working installation tomorrow and try to give you some hint. Too bad I cannot currently test whether it works with DHCP (my ISP only allows one MAC, and I do not have a full DOS installation on the machine which is connected to the network).
mr

14.12.2008, 21:44

@ mht
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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> But your DR-WebSpyder is simply improperly configured. I will look
> at my old working installation tomorrow and try to give you some hint. Too
> bad I cannot currently test whether it works with DHCP (my ISP only allows
> one MAC, and I do not have a full DOS installation on the machine which is
> connected to the network).
You are right, if it's an Arachne fork it would be dumb if them removed access over packet driver. Also the existence of the pkt2odi implies that.

The question is only how to tell DR-WebSpyder to use the packet driver.
mht

Homepage

Wroclaw, Poland,
15.12.2008, 09:46

@ mr
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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> The question is only how to tell DR-WebSpyder to use the packet driver.
Currently I have at hands only a copy of my old working Arachne install, but these things should be similar in DR-WebSpyder.

Please find the (plain text) configuration file, DRWEBSPY.CFG or similar name, and look for the following keywords:

Connection READY
; this tells the browser that it does not have to do anything to initialize
; the connection (i.e., not to run the dialer)

Hangup NUL
; same as above, but for closing the connection

IP_Address BOOTP
NameServer
AltNameServer
Gateway
AltGateway
Netmask
; BOOTP should work with DHCP, too
; if not, you probably have to write a script that obtains your current
; IP address as well as DNS and Gateway addresses and netmask, and writes
; them directly into the configuration file as xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
mht

Homepage

Wroclaw, Poland,
16.12.2008, 11:18

@ mht
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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I found a copy of my working DR-Webspyder install. It may be important that the line

set WEBSPY=LAN

was added in DRWEBSPY.BAT before

set WEBARG1=%1
set WEBARG2=%2

The corresponding section of WEB32.CFG was

[TCPIP]
my_ip = 82.143.145.91
gateway1 = 82.143.145.1
gateway2 =
nameserver1 = 82.143.159.34
nameserver2 = 82.143.143.11
Netmask = 255.255.255.0

There are BOOTP-related strings in CORE.EXE, so I suspect that BOOTP/DHCP is supported exactly as in Arachne -- please try

my_ip = BOOTP

and leave the other values empty.
mr

16.12.2008, 22:52

@ mht
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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I will try that, what must be the name of the config files? In the default archive are so many config files...
mht

Homepage

Wroclaw, Poland,
16.12.2008, 23:14

@ mr
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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> I will try that, what must be the name of the config files?
The config file responsible for Internet settings is WEB32.CFG.

> In the default archive are so many config files...
What archive do you have? My copy of DR-WebSpyder (2.1-beta2) was downloaded from Caldera and there was an installer included.
mr

17.12.2008, 14:08

@ mht
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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> > I will try that, what must be the name of the config files?
>
> The config file responsible for Internet settings is WEB32.CFG.
Ok, I will try that, there was no such file.

> > In the default archive are so many config files...
>
> What archive do you have? My copy of DR-WebSpyder (2.1-beta2) was
> downloaded from Caldera and there was an installer included.
It was from some ftp server and v2.0.

I am interested in the newest version. Where to download?

Still any official downloads?
mht

Homepage

Wroclaw, Poland,
17.12.2008, 21:44

@ mr
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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> I am interested in the newest version. Where to download?
See private message from me.

> Still any official downloads?
The only place I can think about is www.drdos.com.
mr

18.12.2008, 00:51

@ mr
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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> I am interested in the newest version. Where to download?
Today I found version 2.5a on http://www.geocities.com/xxideveloper/ (use Google cache or something similar because it's temporary down).

The archive was damaged.

Can someone else try to confirm?
mht

Homepage

Wroclaw, Poland,
18.12.2008, 09:53

@ mr
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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This is probably the thing known as Lineo Embrowser, targetted at the embedded device market, released after Caldera Thin Clients transformed into Lineo (more or less precisely).

> The archive was damaged.
> Can someone else try to confirm?
I downloaded it and it is OK. Just a bit difficult to unpack because of its complicated internal structure. Note that GENERIC.ZIP is a multiple volume archive (part #1 in DISK1.ZIP, part #2 in DISK2.ZIP). I unpacked it successfully by copying the two parts onto two floppies and running PKUNZIP then. I have not tried to actually run anything yet.

By the way: Does anyone know a better way to handle multiple volume ZIP archives? They are not very convenient because all parts have the same name...
mr

18.12.2008, 14:33

@ mht
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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> I downloaded it and it is OK. Just a bit difficult to unpack because of
> its complicated internal structure. Note that GENERIC.ZIP is a multiple
> volume archive (part #1 in DISK1.ZIP, part #2 in DISK2.ZIP). I unpacked it
> successfully by copying the two parts onto two floppies and running PKUNZIP
> then. I have not tried to actually run anything yet.
>
> By the way: Does anyone know a better way to handle multiple volume ZIP
> archives? They are not very convenient because all parts have the same
> name...
Unpacking is indeed a bit tricky but worked.

It is Lineo Embrowser. In VMware and DOSBox it crashes (screenshot: http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/3135/20081218143053rb1.png), on bare metal not tested yet. Surprisingly it works in NTVDM a bit, nice grapics and animations, scattered sound and menus do not react.

Maybe a problem with DPMI?
Rugxulo

Homepage

Usono,
18.12.2008, 21:28

@ mr
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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> > By the way: Does anyone know a better way to handle multiple volume ZIP
> > archives? They are not very convenient because all parts have the same
> > name...
 >
> Unpacking is indeed a bit tricky but worked.
No idea about multiple .ZIPs since I never use that obscure feature (although ZIP 3.0 and Unzip 6.0 beta support it, I think). BTW, Zip 3.1a beta is out now (although -f still is broken for DOS, dunno why).

> It is Lineo Embrowser. In VMware and DOSBox it crashes (screenshot:
> http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/3135/20081218143053rb1.png),
> on bare metal not tested yet. Surprisingly it works in NTVDM a bit, nice
> grapics and animations, scattered sound and menus do not react.
>
> Maybe a problem with DPMI?
In DOSBox and VMware I assume you're using CWSDPMI? Try "cwsdpmi -x" first, and see what happens. Even better, use the latest version (srcs).
mr

18.12.2008, 23:14

@ Rugxulo
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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> > Maybe a problem with DPMI?
>
> In DOSBox and VMware I assume you're using CWSDPMI? Try "cwsdpmi -x"
> first, and see what happens. Even better, use the
> latest version
> (srcs).
I am using latest version of csdpmi but only for testing, normally I highly prefer HX DOS Extender (excellent project ;)). Both are not working but NTVDM, strange.
RayeR

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CZ,
15.12.2008, 11:49

@ mr
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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Hi,
I had also played with WebSpyder long time ago. I'll try to look if I have some working config file for it. Currently I use some DOS TCPIP package based o MS network and NDIS drivers because for my Gbit eth. there's no packet driver, just NDIS and ODI for novell.

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.
Laaca

Homepage

Czech republic,
14.12.2008, 20:42

@ mht
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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Yes, I think it is based upon 1.40 version. The first impression is extremely good but it has realy terrible HTML rendering. Last Arachne versions display web pages a lot better. So does the ELinks.

It is sad that in case of Arachne the open source development was so horrible unsuccesful. After almost eight years wasn't made any big progress in Arachne - just some bugfixes and some tweaks but no breakthrough.

And Caldera after few months succesfuly removed the paintful xSwap technology and converted it into DPMI environment with Allegro as a graphics library.

---
DOS-u-akbar!
DOS386

01.01.2009, 13:14
(edited by DOS386, 02.01.2009, 10:25)

@ Laaca
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP? Arachne vs Spyder

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Laaca wrote (about WebSpyder):

> Yes, I think it is based upon 1.40 version.
It's from 1998. So ...

> It is sad that in case of Arachne the open source development was
> so horrible unsuccesful. After almost eight years wasn't made any big
> progress in Arachne - just some bugfixes and some tweaks but no breakthrough.
glennmcc wrote:

> My statement saying that she has now reached 'end of of life'
> does NOT mean 'death'..... all it means is that any further development
> is simply going to have to be done by someone other than me.
> Because I will not be spending 4 to 6 hours a day, every day working on
> her continued development the way I have been for these past eight years.
Programming is hard :-(

---
This is a LOGITECH mouse driver, but some software expect here
the following string:*** This is Copyright 1983 Microsoft ***
flox

Homepage

14.12.2008, 13:37

@ Rugxulo
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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> Also never tried this (didn't come with my copy of DR-DOS 7.03, at least),
> but I'm pretty sure people will tell you that it's based upon an old
> version of Arachne. The latest Arachne v195;GPL is supposed to be
> pretty fast. Of course, it's probably the last from Glenn McCorkle too.
> :-(
DR-Webspyder is the port of Arachne to DJGPP, using the graphic library Allegro. I think problem of porting Arachne to DJGPP is to change the graphic library and to remove the XMS/EMS library. The rest - also the port to WATT-32 - shouldn't be a big problem now.

At this days maybe a first port to Watcom would be a good idea. Udo made a first port and ported the graphic library too. It's branch uses DPMI16 and uses XMS too, which should be removed in the last step of the port, since it would make it much faster. Also DPMI16 isn't the last choice.

What a pity that the source of Dr-Webspyder isn't available.
rr

Homepage E-mail

Berlin, Germany,
14.12.2008, 20:56

@ Rugxulo
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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> > Can I get somehow a "virtual modem" for this software so I can use in
> > reality with my ADSL connection?
>
> I suspect rr will know more about this. Sadly, I have no clue.
I always only use a hardware router nowadays. So DOS only needs a packet driver.

---
Forum admin
mr

17.12.2008, 14:09

@ mr
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

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Is there still some official support?

Who is the copyright holder?

Anyone asked them to publish the source?
mht

Homepage

Wroclaw, Poland,
17.12.2008, 21:48

@ mr
 

DR WebSpyder with network card and DHCP?

Post reply

> Is there still some official support?
I doubt.

> Who is the copyright holder?
Probably DRDOS, Inc. got everything that was left from Caldera.

> Anyone asked them to publish the source?
I would not expect them to answer positively, anyway :-(
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