UnoDOS pc64

Networking

UnoDOS can get online by itself: it connects over Ethernet, and over Wi-Fi on Intel adapters, gets an address automatically, and browses the web, including secure sites.

Getting online

UnoDOS has its own built-in networking. On a PC with a supported wired network adapter, or a supported Intel Wi-Fi adapter, it gets an address automatically (DHCP), resolves names (DNS), finds the gateway and other machines, and browses the web over HTTP and HTTPS. Nothing else needs to be installed.

A small network chip sits in the taskbar tray so you can see the state at a glance: it names the medium - LAN over a cable, Wi-Fi over the air - with a question mark after it (LAN?, Wi-Fi?) while the link is up but no address has arrived yet, and nothing when the link is down. A dot beside it blinks on traffic - amber while sending, green while receiving. Hovering the chip shows a tooltip: on Wi-Fi it leads with the network's name and signal, on a cable with the address and link speed. The System app spells it out in full, for example Network: link up, IP 192.168.2.157.

Wired network adapters

UnoDOS drives the common Intel Gigabit families directly - the built-in wired port on most PCs and laptops with an Ethernet socket:

  • Intel 8254x (the classic e1000 family)
  • Intel 82571–4 / 82574 / 82583 and the I217 / I218 / I219 laptop LOM chips (the e1000e family)
  • Intel I210 / I211 / I350 and the 8257x server parts (the igb family)

Realtek wired chips (RTL8168 / 8111 / 8125) are supported too - the port built into most desktop boards and small-form-factor PCs. This one is verified on real hardware: a small fanless PC with an RTL8168 on its board links at gigabit, takes a DHCP address and browses, with no adapter plugged in.

How this is verifiedThe Intel drivers are verified in the emulator against the QEMU e1000 / e1000e / igb models, and the Realtek driver on a real machine. Most test laptops have no wired port, so the built-in NIC on any given laptop may not have been exercised end to end - if a built-in port does not come up, a supported USB Ethernet adapter (below) is the reliable path.

Checking the connection

The Network tab in the Control Panel answers the question first and keeps the detail for later. On a wired machine it is one line - Ethernet: connected - 1 Gbps, or cable in, no address while DHCP is still at work - and a Details button that opens the addresses underneath: the IP address, the router, and on a machine with Wi-Fi the adapter's own address, with Refresh and Renew IP under them.

The Control Panel's Network tab on a wired machine, with Details open: the Ethernet line, then the addresses. The green LAN chip in the tray corner mirrors the same state.

On a machine with a Wi-Fi adapter the tab grows. It leads with Connected to and the network's name, with the signal, WPA2 or WPA3, and the address on the line under it. Then the networks in range, each with a padlock if it is secured, a four-bar signal meter, and a Connected or Saved marker. A password box appears only when the highlighted network is locked and new to this machine, and the buttons are only the ones that can do something at that moment: Connect, Disconnect, Forget, Rescan. The wired line and Details follow underneath.

The same tab on a machine with Wi-Fi: the answer, the networks, the controls, then the wired line and Details. Captured in the emulator, which has no Wi-Fi card, with a debug switch that draws the pane and seeds example networks - the pane says so on screen. On a laptop the list is what the radio hears.
The Network appThe Network app in the Start menu shows the same summary in the same words, and keeps the network self-test - DHCP, a ping, a small file fetch, a TCP echo and a TLS handshake - behind a Run tests button rather than running it every time the window opens. The echo and TLS steps only have a peer under QEMU, so on a real machine those two time out rather than pass; the rest are real.

Secure sites

Secure (https://) pages load over an encrypted TLS connection, and UnoDOS checks the site's certificate against a built-in list of common certificate authorities (Let's Encrypt, DigiCert and others), so you can browse the secure web.

USB Ethernet

If a PC has no built-in wired network, or its port is not supported, UnoDOS can use a USB Ethernet adapter instead. This is the most reliable way to get a laptop online, and it is tested on real hardware. Two chip families are supported - check a listing's chipset line before you buy:

  • ASIX AX88179 / AX88179A (USB 3.0 gigabit). Verified on real hardware. Common products: Plugable USB3-E1000, StarTech USB31000S, TRENDnet TU3-ETG, j5create JUE130.
  • Realtek RTL8152 / 8153 / 8155 / 8156 (up to 2.5 Gigabit), including the chips built into many laptop-maker and third-party USB-C docks - for example the TP-Link UE300. The faster RTL8157 / 8159 (5G/10G) parts are recognised but declined.
Tested on metalAn ASIX AX88179A adapter has been taken all the way to a DHCP lease and a gateway ping on a real laptop. The older ASIX AX88772 / AX88178A chips are not supported.

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi works on Intel hardware, on one machine so far. UnoDOS ships drivers for Intel (AX201 / AX210), Realtek and Marvell wireless chips. On a laptop with an Intel AX201 the driver loads the adapter's firmware, scans, joins a WPA2 network and takes an address - a real association followed by a real DHCP lease, on the laptop rather than in the emulator. The Realtek and Marvell drivers still stop after loading firmware: they do not associate yet. On anything else, a wired port or a USB Ethernet adapter is still the sure way to get online.

Joining is done from the Control Panel's Network tab, described above: pick a network, type its password if it is locked and new to this machine, and press Connect. The password is kept, so the network shows as Saved and the next join asks for nothing; Forget discards it, and Disconnect leaves the network while keeping the radio on, so the list stays live. A machine that boots with a saved network in range is meant to rejoin it by itself; that boot-time join has been fixed but not yet watched on hardware.

UnoDOS also speaks WPA3 now, which matters more than it sounds: a modern access point with protected management frames required will refuse a machine that cannot offer them, and a 6 GHz network is WPA3-only by regulation, so a WPA2-only machine is not "older", it is locked out. The supplicant reads what the access point is actually offering and negotiates, rather than announcing WPA2 and hoping - WPA2-PSK or WPA3-SAE, with management-frame protection when it is asked for, and SAE preferred on a network that offers both.

What does not work yetThe WPA3 exchange authenticates against a real access point, but the handshake after it does not complete yet, so on a network that offers both WPA3 and WPA2 UnoDOS falls back to WPA2 and joins. A WPA3-only network cannot be joined today. Two more limits are worth knowing: changing to a different network after a successful join does not work reliably yet, and a reboot is the sure way to do it; and the join itself holds the desktop for the few seconds the association takes, with a spinner and a running description of each step.

Networking in the browser

UnoDOS running in a browser tab has a working network card. It takes an address by DHCP, answers a ping, resolves names and loads pages, and everything on this page behaves the way it does on a real machine. What is different is where the wire goes: it ends inside the tab.

That is not a limitation somebody forgot to lift. A web page cannot open a network connection of the ordinary kind at all - the browser has no such capability to offer - so every emulator you have seen with real internet access is relaying its traffic through a server somebody runs and pays for. Rather than route your traffic through ours, the far side of the wire is a small network living in the same tab: a router at 10.0.2.2, a name server at 10.0.2.3, and one web server. Every name you type resolves to it, so any address reaches a page explaining where you are.

Nothing leaves the tabNothing the emulated machine sends can leave your browser. There is no route out of it in the code - not to your own network, not to this website, not to anywhere else - so the machine is a safe place to point at things. Getting real internet access would mean deliberately adding a relay, which is exactly the decision this arrangement leaves in the open.

On a real PC, or in a virtual machine of your own, none of this applies: the drivers above talk to real hardware and the machine is on your network like any other.