Connecting DOS and Windows Doom

The last time, I set up a deathmatch game, I had only DOS PC's and coaxial LAN cable with termination resistors.
Now I use a router (Fritzbox fon) and I want to connect my old DOS PC with my Windows 2000 PC.
Doom95 doesn't seem to communicate with my DOS PC.
IPX driver is loaded (-nodes 1 works). The Fritzbox indicades a connection. The firewall (Zonealarm) doesn't even detect network access. Might be Doom95, as I wasn't able to run a network game back then using Windows 95 either.

Which Doom ports can I use for this? Preferably close to Vanilla (as my old DOS PC couldn't handle much eye candy or over detailed maps anyways). Any suggestions?

First of all, don't use DOOM95, it has a lot of weird bugs and there are better ports for Windows that mimic Vanilla (Chocolate DOOM for example).On your DOS PC I would recommend Boom, because it's completely compatible with any Vanilla WADs and there are no bugs which can ruin the multiplayer game.

Unfortunately, you can't connect different source ports with eachother. So you'll have to run Boom under DOSBox or something similar, which doesn't give good results. (I'm not even sure if DOSBox programs have acces to network stuff.)

boomlala said:

there are better ports for Windows that mimic Vanilla (Chocolate DOOM for example).On your DOS PC I would recommend Boom
...
Unfortunately, you can't connect different source ports with eachother.

And that's why you suggesting Chocolate Doom AND Boom. Sorry, not really helpful.

Besides, Doom95 is supposed to connect to Vanilla as there is a special option for exactly that. I never saw it working though.

What I'm looking for is either a Windows Doom port which can connect to Vanilla Doom, or a source port which has executables for both systems.
Are there any known working combinations?

I forgot to mention it above. I also installed my old Windows 95 in Virtual PC and have Vanilla Doom in it. Doesn't connect. I'm not sure if the IPX protocol under Windows 95 is compatible to a DOS driver, though.

Note that whatever port you use on the Windows machine must be able to use IPX as this is what vanilla doom uses for networking. (And I assume other DOS ports) As far as I know, Doom95 is the only Windows port that supports IPX. (though I can't remember, as I haven't used it in a while. Anyone care to refresh my memory?)

Are Boom and PrBoom compatible? If so, you should try that. It's a long shot, but it could work.

or you could use an old dos version of zdoom and the same version for windows (as I suppose they are still held on zdoom.org)

As far as I know, Doom95 is the only Windows port that supports IPX.

Older versions of Doomsday used to support IPX but considering there is no DOS version and it uses a completely different network model it won't be much use to LogicDeluxe.

Ehhh and please do not forget: IPX is a non-routable protocol. I am not sure, how your router (is it a switch or is it a hub?) handles this. Maybe you should try a direct connection with a crosslink cable!

BTW: DOSbox can run vanilla DOOM perfectly under Windows. (but I never tried the IPX...)

AFAIK, DOSBox won't actually use IPX on the real network, even if the programs inside think they are. It uses TCP/IP for IPX, modem, and nullmodem.

Doom95 never worked across routers. As suggested above, use a Doom port for best results.

Mordeth said:

Doom95 never worked across routers. As suggested above, use a Doom port for best results.

Beside IPX Doom95 does support Directplay/Winsock over TCP/IP, which should be routable.

But he is stuck with vanilla dos-doom (and therefore IPX) on one machine, so he has to use Doom95 with IPX and a direct (crosslink-cable) connection between both computers.

EDIT: original IPX over ethernet might indeed work with an appropriate switch. But for direct connection it might be necessary, cause not all ancient cards support autonegotiation.

BTW: Did this work under DOS? I if remember correctly, we only used this:
 

Sorry to resurrect an age-old thread, but why would IPX require a direct crossover cable? It’s just an Ethernet protocol; couldn’t he just plug in both machines to the router (or switch if he has one) and make them talk to each other using IPX?

@perlun I'm really confused by your necropost.  Are you trying to accomplish the same thing or something?

It is indeed the case that IPX should work over any L2 switch, which in theory would include the switch in a consumer router.  With that said your results may vary based on the chipset/firmware involved as some do have filtering features that look beyond L2.  I would imagine most unmanaged switches should work though.

5 hours ago, perlun said:

Sorry to resurrect an age-old thread, but why would IPX require a direct crossover cable? It’s just an Ethernet protocol; couldn’t he just plug in both machines to the router (or switch if he has one) and make them talk to each other using IPX?

Most versions of Doom won't network to each and don't support IPX, so it's a moot point. Chocolate Doom apparently can network with original DOS Doom, but whether it would work on Windows 2000 I have no idea. Given this thread is 16 years old, bumping it to ask seems more than a shade pointless.

On 11/2/2023 at 12:50 AM, Murdoch said:

 

Most versions of Doom won't network to each and don't support IPX, so it's a moot point. Chocolate Doom apparently can network with original DOS Doom, but whether it would work on Windows 2000 I have no idea. Given this thread is 16 years old, bumping it to ask seems more than a shade pointless.

 

Please correct me, if i am wrong, but most official (DOS) releases came bundled with ipxsetup.exe and the famout dm.exe to launch ipx-network games?!?!
We played doom for years in our office, running ipx-network-games out of the box, if I remember correctly....

36 minutes ago, DoomGater said:

Please correct me, if i am wrong, but most official (DOS) releases came bundled with ipxsetup.exe and the famout dm.exe to launch ipx-network games?!?!
We played doom for years in our office, running ipx-network-games out of the box, if I remember correctly....

 

 

Sounds about right. I summon @Doomkid to this thread to confirm if my recollection is accurate.

I made a quick check using

http://doomgate.de/files/duub/index.html

starting with shareware version 1.2 ALL versions have IPXSETUP included...

Oddly, for far too many years, the Steam version of Doom, Doom 2 etc came with literally only the game EXE - no SETUP, let alone IPXSETUP, SERSETUP etc.. I can only speculate as to why it was sold in this broken state for so long. Users could not customise anything without prior knowledge of how default.cfg works!

On 11/6/2023 at 1:28 PM, Doomkid said:

I can only speculate as to why it was sold in this broken state for so long.

Maybe they just interested in money, but not in DOOM?
If the customer can't IPX, their support  doesn't have to answer IPX-questions...

Not sure if this connects with the gist of this necroed thread, but in 2023 you can play vanilla vs Choco vs DOSBox using the driver stack @fraggle made a post about on vogons (and here eslewhere actually):

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=96086