Eta Carina Ltd (today)
Eta Carina Ship About Me Eta Carina Ship
Canis Major Leo, Carina, Eridanus and Aquarius Orion and Auriga

Eta Carina Ltd System Overview

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As I mentioned earlier on my first network system was built using two network cards and Dos netware drivers. I used the following drivers to play Doom with.

LSL.COM Netware Link Support Layer v2.01
NE2000.COM Novell NE2000 Ethernet MLID v1.51
IPXODI.COM Netware IPX/SPX Protocol v2.10
When I became more interested in networking I upgraded my network system with Windows 95 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11. It was a simple peer to peer network using a Bus topology connected together with a thinnet coaxial cable. I used the NetBEUI and IPX/SPX protocols. All my machines have multiple system configurations. For instance when I booted up the Windows 95 machine I could press F4 to bypass booting Windows 95 and boot Dos 6.22 instead. That would in turn boot up a dual configuration CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT file with three options:
Windows for Workgroups
Standard Dos
Dos with Network drivers
Then things got complicated when I began to study Windows NT. All my machines then booted up with Windows NT first then Windows 95 and finally to Dos 6.22 with its dual configurations. When I wanted to play Multiplayer Quake (I moved on from Doom by then) I would turn one machine on wait for the selection screen press the Dos selection and then F4 to bypass booting Windows 95 and then wait for Dos to load and present me with the three choices and pick the Dos with Network Drivers option. My first Windows NT network was built around the Single Domain Model. One machine was the Primary Domain Controller Server and the rest were Workstations that logged on to the Domain. I was using Windows NT 3.51 Server and Windows NT 3.51 Workstations with one machine using Windows 95. When I got a good deal on a five port hub I upgraded to twisted pair cabling and split the network into two Domains, ETA and ZETA. ETA now had four machines connected with UTP cabling using NetBEUI and IPX/SPX protocols. ZETA had two machines connected using thinnet coaxial cabling using the same protocols. The exercises I did for my course saw the structure of Eta Carina Ltd’s network change many times. At one time I had the second machine on ZETA running Microsoft Network Client 3.0 in Dos mode. I dropped the IPX/SPX protocol after awhile and just used the NetBEUI protocol. I tied the two Domains together using a Trust Relationship between the two. My system now had the following machines running:
Windows NT 3.51 Primary Domain Controller and File Server for ETA (LEO)
Windows NT 3.51 Backup Domain Controller and Print Server for ETA (CARINA)
Windows NT 3.51 Workstation on ETA (AQUARIUS)
Windows 95 Workstation on ETA (CANIS MAJOR)
Windows NT 3.51 Primary Domain Controller and file Server for ZETA (ORION)
Windows for Workgroups 3.11 Workstation on ZETA (AURIGA)
When Windows NT 4.0 came out I upgraded all the ETA operating systems leaving ZETA with the 3.51 version. Because of my interest in programming I needed a system in which I could build and test my programs on as well as do the study exercises on, so I looked into building an Intranet. Using my previous system had a few draw backs. I wrote a Java Applet for my Webpage which displayed an image from a Quake level and asked for input as to which teleporter to use. Each option brought up a pop-up window with an image on it. I spent hours getting the window size just right to display the image and text. It worked fine until I uploaded the Applet to my ISP Server. The windows displayed in a default size and not the size I had indicated. So I redesigned my system as an Intranet so that I could test my Web designs on other machines before I downloaded them to my ISP server.My Primary Domain Controller serves as the Internet Information Sever. I copy all my projects to this machine and then test it using Internet Explorer and Netscape browsers on the different platforms on all my machines. When I added the seventh machine it was used as a Router to tie the two domains together under the TCP/IP protocol. A very complicated system which I never got to work 100% (something to do with Windows NT 3.51 Beta version of DNS I think) so I finally dropped the ZETA Domain and now have all the machines running on the ETA Domain.

After four months at my new job I decided it was time to upgrade my system again. I added a new motherboard with a Intel Pentium 233Mhz MMX processor and 64Mb S-DRAM memory module, two Quantum EIDE 3.2 GB hard drives, a Diamond Stealth DS4000 4Mb Video card, Sound Blaster 64AWE Value card. I got a new middle tower case to stuff these components into because the off/on switch was sticking on my main computer. I aslo bought two removable hard drive carriages for my NT workstation machine as it was now doubling as my Dial up Networking platform to connect to Unisys's network. My company contracts to them and require us to log on to their network to update job status. I now have a hard drive configured specifically for connecting to the Unisys network using a Windows 95 platform and another drive with dual boot configuration consisting of Windows 95 and Windows NT.

The reason for all this carry on is the conflicts I was getting with the IP addresses of my network and Unisys’ network. I couldn’t play Quake 2 over my network using Windows NT (too slow) so I was using Windows 95. When I added Dial up Networking to Unisys my Domain could no longer be seen by this machine. Two thirty dollar removable hard drive carriages and presto I now have a machine with three different platforms. I shifted motherboards amongst the other machines and swapped cases with Carina and Eridanus. I am planning to try the router thing again with Eridanus and NT Server 4.0. I have updated my Hardware Section to show this upgrade. I purchased a Virtual Domain Name of eta-carina-ltd.com to post my Web Pages that I create. All my pages can be reached at that address in the future as it will never change even if I switch ISP. All I do is notify NameSecure and they point my Virtual Address to my new address. My E-mail can be sent to my Virtual Address as well with any username. (eg Stephen@eta-carina-ltd.com or Butthead@eta-carina-ltd.com). If this is of interest to you then check out their site at NameSecure.

My system now had the following machines running:

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This page was last updated on 25 July 1998