I converted 2 MS-Dos 6.22 machines to virtual machines. Both computers have software that communicates over NETBEUI and IPX (I came to that conclusion after inspecting autoexec.bat - It loads IPX stack).
I followed this Vmware Forums post and installed the DOS amd_pcnet driver, configured it, and bound it to the required protocols. Also i installed the ODI driver for IPX/SPX did the same steps as above for it.
It seems they have NetBEUI communication, but I cannot PING between them using IPXPING.exe. I used the network address 00:00:00:00 and the MAC of the second computer when pinging.
How can I absolutely make sure there is NetBEUI and IPX communication between the 2 VM's?
UPDATE 1: I found that c:\net\ has an .ini files with the name of other machines on the network. I assumed that the files store connection configuration, and found that the file actually has a parameter netcard=DRIVER_FILE and changed it to the correct driver.
UPDATE 2: I ran Wireshark on the VMNet0 and I see that both VM's use IPX, NETVIOS, SMB and other protocols. I will inspect the packets and try to find more clues.
UPDATE 3: From the packet inspection I can see that both machines have successfully communicated over NetBIOS, established a session and transferred files using SMB. I think that is a solid indicator that NetBIOS is not the issue.
IPX, on the other side seems to have malformed packets. Both hosts broadcasted an announcement and both announcements were malformed.
A question: Is there a command to check connectivity over NetBIOS?
UPDATE 4: After much effort in both trying to solve the problem and trying to find an MS-DOS expert the client decided to discontinue the project.
I would try out Dosbox. It has ipx support and with a few commands you can activate it. In fact simple gamers are the target audience. Dosbox tunnels ipx in UDP packets.