I've been agonizing over the question of why I can't connect an 86Box virtual machine powered by FreeDOS to the Internet. But now, it seems, I have found a fix, or at least a preliminary one.
Using a fine-toothed comb (as it were), I went over the FDAUTO.BAT file and found that it referenced another batch file that handled all of the networking stuff, namely, C:\FREEDOS\BIN\FDNET.BAT. So, going over THAT, I arrived at what I figured was a critical line in the second batch file, which was vinfo /m. Typing this into the command line didn't seem to do anything, but when I typed vinfo /m | echo %errorlevel%, lo and behold, FreeDOS returned the number 5. So, going back into FDNET.BAT, I eventually arrived at this piece of code: ``` :hw086 :hw186 :hw286 :hw386 :hw486 :hw586 :hw686 :NoHardware vecho /t %_FDNET.LANG% ERROR.HARDWARE goto End ``` and that's why it told me that Physical hardware networking is not supported at this time. Well... Not willing to admit defeat, I continued going through FDNET.BAT to find out what it was about VirtualBox and VMware that made the network go... ...and both of them branched to :vmGeneric. From THERE, I discovered that FreeDOS supports three network card families: AMD PCnet, Realtek RTL8139, and NE2000-compatibles – the same ones used by VirtualBox, VMware, and (though I haven't used FreeDOS on this) QEMU! So, going back to the physical hardware section of the batch file, I simply added a branching line after :hw686, so that the code block now reads: ``` :hw086 :hw186 :hw286 :hw386 :hw486 :hw586 :hw686 goto vmGeneric :NoHardware vecho /t %_FDNET.LANG% ERROR.HARDWARE goto End ``` and opened the 86Box configuration to install an AMD PCnet-FAST III into an emulated PCI slot, which triggered a hard reset. And wouldn't you know? The network worked! I was able to ping www.google.com and get a pong sent back to me. I'm kinda having a little bit of difficulty with fdnpkg though, so maybe there are still some kinks to work out. But for right now, I can declare at least a preliminary victory! Brandon Taylor
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