Ok, a little progress made with the dreaded 1017 error gone and I can now make it past the login screen (Yay!) I disabled the virtual IPs from VMware that were on both the Server and the Client machines, and the key change was to edit emu_config.ini section from this:
<!-- Loginserver information. Defaults shown -->
<loginserver>
<host>myshortname.no-ip.info</host>
<port>5999</port>
<account></account>
<password></password>
</loginserver>
to this:
<!-- Loginserver information. Defaults shown -->
<loginserver>
<host>eqemulator.net</host>
<port>5998</port>
<account></account>
<password></password>
</loginserver>
And updated eqhosts.txt accordingly
So I'm now using the global login server to get back into my own box which seems kind of clunky but might be useful for getting friends and family connected to my server.
Once again, if I log in from the same machine my server is on all is fine and I can enter the world, but if I try the same thing on a LAN box I get 'Server is not Responding' message.
My next trick will be to experiment with some portforwarding configurations for both server and client.
All suggestions are most welcome.
Ultimately I'd like to use my own login server and perhaps set up a VNP if required for family and friends to login from the WAN(Internet). One step at at time though
Once I can achieve connectivity from a LAN box, I'll gradually move back closer to Vales' settings for the login server which is currently sitting idle on my server!