🚀 go-pugleaf

We're upgrading.


The new server has an Intel Zappa motherboard and a 100MHz Pentium, with 24MB
RAM, an AHA-2940 and a 1GB SCSI drive, and a "Tiara" Arcnet NIC, running
NetWare 3.11.  There are 68%  cache buffers available.  The new workstations
are Intel Endeavor motherboards with 133MHz Pentiums, 16MB RAM more of those
Tiara Arcnet cards, Windows 95, and Novell Client32 for W95.

All the Arcnet cards in the workstations are configured for IO port 2E0,
IRQ2, and C8000 RAMBASE.  The PCI BIOS on the motherboards has been told
that IRQ9 is "in use by ISA card".  Tomorrow I will down the server and
check all the hardware settings there.

I originally set up the workstations in the shop, with NE2000 clone NICs,
set up a server with the appropriate name and user accounts, and logged them
all in.  Let 'em burn and thrash over a weekend with no problems.  Then I
took them out to the real world...

At each old workstation I logged in as Supervisor, and did "XCOPY C:\*.*
F:\BACKUPS\<username>\*.*/E".  When that was done, I set up the new
workstation, moved the Arcnet card from the old workstation, reconfigured
Client32 for the card (using the driver for "Novell/Arcnet compatible")
opened a DOS prompt and did "XCOPY F:\BACKUPS\<username>\*.* 
C:\OLDCOMP\*.*/E".

Problem is, it's taking WAAAAAAY longer to move stuff back onto the new
workstations, because I keep getting this error box:  "Client32: Please wait
while Xcopy32 retries request to <server>.  To stop waiting, press Enter.
NetWare will then return an error and try to connect in the background."  If
I leave it alone, this box goes away after a minute or so, and the copying
continues for a while.  But I can't move more than 100K or so (average)
without getting this error.  I've looked at the settings for CLient32, and
it bugs me a bit that the timeouts are set to at least 30 seconds and yet
I get this error sometimes at intervals of less than a second.  I also
notice that occasionally, a file which has been successfully copied will
still show as open on the server.

Other than the copy operation, traffic on the network is light.  There are
only 8 users, and they're mostly standing around waiting for their new PCs
to be installed, if you catch my drift...  We'll be changing over to
ethernet or fast ethernet in October or so, when they move to a new
building.  In the meantime we're stuck with Arcnet -- they don't want to
pull new cable.


Any clues on what's going on?  It took about an hour to move one
workstation's files to the server; it took over 5 hours to move the same
files back!

--
Gordon S. Hlavenka          O-          cgordon@worldnet.att.net
     Warning!  This post may contain a "stealth" sig virus.