Connecting the HP Palmtop to a LAN

Both the Silicom EtherFlash PCMCIA and Ethernet PCMCIA cards come with cables to connect to 10BASE-T (twisted pair) and 10BASE-2 (thin coaxial) systems. Silicom tech support tells us that the coaxial connection draws too much power from the Palmtop and does not work reliably. The Ethernet cards also come with a 3.5 diskette containing the necessary PCMCIA software drivers (SEFHP.EXE for the EtherFlash card and SPEHP .EXE for the Ethernet card), a quick installation guide, and the users manual. Once you have installed the necessary software and configured your Palmtop for the Ethernet card, as described in the sidebar on the following page, you're ready to connect up to your LAN.

The installation process creates a batch file named STARTNET.BAT that automatically loads the appropriate software, accesses the LANs file server, and presents you with the log-in prompt. When I want to connect to our Local Area Network, I do the following:

  1. 1. Remove the Flash memory card from my Palmtops card slot and insert the Ethernet adapter into the Palmtops card slot.

  2. 2. Reboot my HP Palmtop by pressing (Ctrl)-(ALT)-(DEL). This causes my Palmtop to restart and configure itself according to the commands in the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files on my Palmtops C drive.

  3. 3. Connect the card to the LAN using the cable that comes with the system.

  4. 4. Go to the DOS C:\ prompt on my Palmtop, type starnet and press (ENTER).

From the log-in prompt I enter my name, my System password, and I'm up and running on the System ready to exchange files and run network DOS software, provided that software is compatible with the HP Palmtop.