Very specific PHP ODBC -> Access 97 on Novell connection question.

I work at a University where we just purchased some expensive reservation management software. It uses Access 97 as a backend, with ASP pages for its web module. Only problem is I want to basically write my own web stuff from scratch using (surprise) PHP. Well, best I can figure, I need to create a System DSN on our mandrake linux web server using the IODBC software found at iodbc.org. Sounds fairly straightforward, right? Well, my sysadmin tells me that it won't work because IPX connectivity is required to do this and that there isn't a good IPX client for Novell (which is what we have the software running on). I suspect he either doesn't know what he's talking about or he thinks I don't know what I'm talking about and is just trying to shut me up so he doesn't have to do more work. So can anyone shed any light on this? Does Access 97 require IPX connectivity to use ODBC? We can't upgrade because the reservations software only works with Access 97. Should this really be so hard? Thanks in advance for your help.