How to enable networking in a MS DOS virtual machine running under VMware

Things you need

MS Dos Networking Client: Download Disk3-1.exe and Disk3-2.exe from ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/Clients/MSCLIENT and put them each in its own folder. For example, make a folder Disk1 and put Disk3-1.exe in it. Similarly put Disk3-2.exe in a folder called Disk2. Extract the contents by double clicking on each.

Floppy Drive: Copy the extracted files from Disk1 into floppy 1 and Disk2 into floppy 2 (you don't need to copy the Disk3-1.exe and Disk3-2.exe to floppy) . If you don't have a physical floppy drive, no need to despair, just create virtual floppy drives and images using an excellent free software called Virtual Floppy Drive (VFD) for Windows NT platform from http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html I personally used this to create .flp files which can be used as floppy drive images under VMware. Rest of the instructions will be as per the virtual floppy images Disk1.flp and Disk2.flp

Network Driver: Download and extract in a floppy or create a virtual floppy image (pcnet.flp) of the AMD PCNet Dos drivers from http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/dos_mslanman.exe

Installation

1. Boot into MS DOS
2. Use Disk1.flp as the floppy image and type A:\setup
3. Follow the prompts for installation and when the Network Adapter List is shown select Advanced Micro Devices AM2100/AM1500T
4. Select user name, computer name as per your desire
5. Under Network Configuration delete the default protocol NWLink IPX Compatible Transport and select Microsoft TCP/IP
6. Select Network Configuration is correct
7. It will prompt you for the OEM drive disk, at that point select Disk2.flp and continue installation. In the end again the Network Client disk will be asked and you will have to select back Disk1.flp as the floppy image.
8. After installation remove the floppy images and reboot.
9. You will get errors regarding NEMM.DOS not found.
   
10. Load the pcnet.flp image and copy pcntnd.dos and pcntnd.nif to C:\net (if you installed the networking client in another place, change accordingly).
11. Change folder to C:\net , open SYSTEM.INI and change netcard=am2100.dos to netcard=pcntnd.dos under section [network drivers]
12. Open PROTOCOL.INI and change DRIVERNAME=AM2100$ to DRIVERNAME=PCNTND$
    
13. Change all occurrences of ms$am2100 to ms$AMD_PCNet and remove ; INTERRUPT=9, ; IOADDRESS=0x300 and ; DMACHANNEL=5 from the originally named [ms$am2100] section in PROTOCOL.INI
    
14. You can customise IP and DHCP configuration under section [TCPIP] in PROTOCOL.INI
15. Reboot and networking should be working
16. You can map shares using the command net use d: \\computername\sharename
    

My Setup
VMware Server v2.0.2 running under Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS
MS DOS v6.22

References

• http://communities.vmware.com/message/38060
• http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~joyoung/msnetclnt/Page1.shtml