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BPQETHER Ethernet Driver for BPQ32 switch.

BPQEther

This driver supports the "AX/25 over Ethernet" protocol, known as BPQETHER, used by the DOS BPQCODE.

It uses the WINPCAP library, obtainable from www.winpcap.org.

WINPCAP is used by Wireshark, an excellent Ethernet protocol analyzer package (previously known as Ethereal) which I suggest you install to enable you to monitor your connections.  Installing Wireshark will also install WINPCAP. BPQEther should work on any version of Windows supported by WINPCAP, but I have only tested it on Win-XP SP2.

Configuration.

The driver is defined to BPQ32 as an External port, and needs some driver-specific configuration

Configuration Statements

There appear to be two varients of BPQETHER protocol, both using EtherType 08FF. One is mine (BPQ), implemented in ODIDRV, and the other (RLI), implemented in Hank, W0RLI's SNOS, and his BPQENET interface. Hank's has an extra 3 bytes after the EtherType field. Linux also implements BPQETHER, using the BPQ format.

Use the TXMODE and RXMODE parameters to select which one you want. Normally these would be the same, but if required can be different.

TYPE sets the Ethertype to use, and will almost always be 08FF, but others can be used if desired (obviously both ends of a link must use the same type). Must be expressed in hex.

DEST sets the destination MAC address, and will probably be the "BPQ Multicast" address 01-42-50-51-00-00, but could be the Broadcast address (all FF), or the MAC address of the adapter at the other end of the link. If linking to a Linux system, you need to use the broadcast address

SOURCE sets the source MAC address, and must be the MAC address of your ethernet card. This can be obtained from the command "ifconfig /all".

ADAPTER is the ethernet adapter device name. Under XP. and possibly others. this is an encoded UID, which can be obtained by running the supplied program "bpqadapters". This will list all installed adapters with their real and "friendly" names, You can cut and paste the required value.

Normally the Ethernet adapter is run in Promiscuous mode, but some adapters (often wifi ones) don't support this, so if you get an error message when opening the adapter, try disabling it by setting:
PROMISCUOUS 0      # Disable Promiscuous mode

Sample Config file for BPQAXIP

PORT
 ID=BPQEther Link
 TYPE=EXTERNAL
 DLLNAME=BPQEther.DLL
 QUALITY=200
 MAXFRAME=4
 FRACK=7000
 RESPTIME=1000
 RETRIES=10
 PACLEN=120
 CONFIG
 
 TXMODE BPQ                  # BPQ or RLI
 RXMODE BPQ                  # BPQ or RLI
 TYPE 08FF                   # Ethernet Type
 DEST 01-42-50-51-00-00      # Target Ethernet Addr - Multicast as used in DOS BPQCODE
 SOURCE 02-FF-60-BA-5C-9E    # Source Ethernet Addr
 ADAPTER \Device\NPF_{959094A1-C20D-4FFD-AF68-D43229E4854B} # Adapter Name
 
ENDPORT


John Wiseman GM8BPQ/G8BPQ 23 Dec 2005
Updated January 2011