Lew Perin

• billgPC: a Win32 bootp client
• rarpd: an NT Win2000 RARP server
• Delineating undocumented Windows API use

billgPC: a free bootp client for Windows 9X and NT/2000

There's an interesting story behind the Internet boot protocol and Windows 95 (be aware that I'm not nearly as fast a programmer as the above link makes me seem!) but the upshot is Microsoft omitted a bootp client from the TCP/IP suite they distributed. (They didn't do any better with NT.)

I've written a bootp client for Windows 95 and NT called billgPC. It's compatible with the Microsoft TCP/IP stack, which would otherwise force you to use DHCP or static IP addressing.

You are invited to download billgPC, in the form of a zip archive. All documentation is in the archive itself, not on this Web page; you'll have to get the archive even to learn how to say billgPC or to find out how it got its name.

Do you need billgPC?

But before you download the zipfile, please take a moment to make sure you really need it. (The reason for this is that my Internet provider charges me for all downloads beyond a certain number of megabytes per month.)

New billgPC users

If you have never downloaded billgPC before, please make sure a bootp client is what you really need. If you need a RARP client you are in the wrong place. (But if you need a RARP server you may be in the right place; see below.) If your PC connects to the Internet only by Dial-Up Networking billgPC can't help you; it works on Local Area Networks.

Current billgPC users

If you already use billgPC and are checking to see if there's a reason to update what you have, please check what version you're using to see if it's the same as the current one. (The version you have now is in the file BILLGPC.LOG in the directory you installed billgPC into.) If your version isn't current, you'll want to examine the recent history of billgPC to see if anything that's been added or fixed since your version will help you. If you're wondering how you might help in developing billgPC, see this link. If you're looking for a way to say thank you, consider this.

Programmers

You might also be interested in billgPC's source code even if you don't need a bootp client. BillgPC's zipfile contains full source code for the application and for drivers for Windows 95 and NT. Programmers who deal with the Win95 and NT Registry or who write NDIS protocol drivers might learn a thing or two. (They might also teach me something; if you see something you think is wrong in billgPC's source code, please contact me by email.)

By the way, programmers who write NDIS protocol drivers for NT will probably be interested in the page I maintain on bugs in the DDK's Packet sample.

So you do need billgPC...

If you do think you need the latest version of billgPC, then by all means please download it.

Latest version

The latest version is 0.60, dated December 8, 2002.

The recent history of billgPC

Check here for features that have been added since you downloaded the archive n versions ago...

• 0.60 Up-to-date with recent versions of Win2K and XP. Avoids unplugged network cards where possible.
• 0.59 Fixed a bug afflicting some users of the /XS command line option.
• 0.58 Now runs successfully on Windows 98 Second Edition.
• 0.57 Now runs on some Win2K and Win98 machines that previously resisted it.
• 0.56 Fixed a bug that bit when running billgPC from a directory with embedded spaces.

Downloading billgPC

You are invited to download billgPC, in the form of a zip archive.

Benefactors of billgPC

• Printing Communications Associates, Inc. provided technical support in the development of the billgPC NDIS protocol driver for Windows 95.
• P. Singh also provided technical advice during the redesign of the VxD resulting in an NDIS protocol driver and made his code available for study.
• Gary Dobbins contributed greatly to the design work (and the drudgery) involved in getting billgPC to run on NT.
• The bighearted Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation bought me a copy of the Microsoft Driver Development Kit, which made it possible to develop a billgPC driver for NT. They also gave me some old token ring hardware to test with, so I now live in what's probably the smallest apartment in Manhattan with its own token ring hub.
• They probably don't know what billgPC is, but Open Systems Resources Inc., a company that makes its money by selling its NT driver development expertise, helped greatly in the development of billgPC's NT driver by giving away its Debug Monitor.
• IBM Global Services Australia contributed a spiffy PCMCIA token ring card that made it a lot easier to figure out how billgPC can discern which netcards are currently in good working order.

What you can do for billgPC

You could send any of the following kinds of message to the email address at the bottom of this page:

• Complain. I'll never know about a bug unless someone tells me. I probably won't add the new feature you want unless I'm asked. On the other hand, the possibility exists that when you send email by clicking on the link at the bottom of the page I'll direct you to a new not-yet-public version that already does what you want.
• Tell me about your bootp client machine. Right now I have a particular need to hear from people who have machines with more than one network card.
• Tell me about your bootp server. As you can read about in detail in the README, running billgPC without the protocol VxD requires that a bootp server be either ``RFC 1542 compliant'' or a ``lucky loafer'' (see the section on BOOTP SERVERS.) Please look at the categorization of servers there and, if yours isn't on any of the three lists, test it yourself and send me the result. Just give your machine an incorrect MAC address using the Control Panel Network applet, reboot and run billgPC without the protocol VxD. Send me the billgpc.log and tell me what the name of the bootp server is.
• Tell me it worked. It can be very useful to know on exactly what kinds of machines billgPC works satisfactorily. Sending by email the two logs mentioned in the README helps me build a database.

What you can do for me

If you find billgPC useful and you want to thank me, why not send a picture postcard from wherever you are to:

billgPC isn't a RARP client (but if you need a RARP server...)

In December 1997 there was a reference to billgPC in Infoworld which described it as a RARP client. This is not true; billgPC does bootp. RARP, which preceded bootp in Net history, is less capable in important ways: it isn't routable and the only piece of IP configuration information it conveys is the IP address. But there is one thing a RARP client can do that a bootp client can't: it is able to ask for the IP address of any host on its network, not just the host it runs on.

Until now there has never been a free RARP client or server available for 32-bit Windows operating systems. I always thought it wouldn't be very hard to adapt billgPC to do RARP, and recently I've created a RARP server (not a client) for NT/Win2K. If you want this, you can find it here.

Delineating undocumented Windows API use

There's been lots of talk over the years about how the use of undocumented Windows APIs gives Microsoft a monopolistic advantage, but as far as I know there hasn't been a way to measure undocumented API use until this Perl program.