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