Update Notes: 21-Mar-2003

I finally solved my SSHDOS problems. I replaced my NetGear FA311 LAN card (i.e. one of those newer and lousier models with NatSemi chipsets), with an older NetGear FA310TX LAN card (based on an older but more reliable Lite-On chipset). The switchover should have taken 5 minutes, but my Windows 2000 Pro decided to go catatonic (it was acting badly leading up to this anyway) and it took me 2 hours to fix things including a re-Ghost'ing of my drive C:. Drat.

With the NetGear FA310TX firmly in place, I tried running the FA310TX's packet driver and SSHDOS from Window 2000's command prompt. Nope, the packet driver couldn't find the LAN card. Realizing what a dummy I had been (Win2K's Command Process DOS <> DOS!), I rebooted from a Windows 98/DOS diskette instead and re-ran the packet driver under plain DOS. Better! The resulting messages sounded "right", but when I tried running SSHDOS, I received some errors suggesting that TCP/IP wasn't set up correctly. I needed to configure the WATTCP.CFG file first and set up an environment variable showing where my files were located.

Basically, WATTCP.CFG needed to know my IP address, net mask, hostname and domain name. Everything else I left at the defaults. With said file minimally tweaked, I re-ran everything, and lo and behold, I received a prompt from my Linux box. It worked! But, would I really descend to plain DOS just to run SSH? Probably not, but at least now I know it could be done.

(There really IS something to be said for the "trial and error process" isn't there? Granted, it's a bit painful bumping into things in "the dark", but it feels so good when you find "the exit".)