Graham Cunliffe <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
 >Can anyone advise me as to why Windows98 would lock-up trying to install
 >a Netgear PNP FA310TX Fast Ethernet PCI card. The OS jumps to restart
 >after stalling a while when detecting the card on startup, and then
 >tells me that Windows encountered a problem addressing/communicating
 >with the card, and will not try again with this device. I have a VIA
 >chipset on a DFI supersocket-7 board, and did once have the card working
 >on the board, until I re-installed it with a new AGP Quantum3D
 >Raven-Banshi graphics card and PC100 SDRAM. I tried different slots, but
 >the same problem occurs. The card works fine on my Intel chipset board,
 >with older hardware.

Hi Graham

I just installed four FA310TX NICs. In three machines, Win98 wanted them
to share IRQs with other devices. The NIC in my Asus P2B worked with its
IRQ shared, but the NICs in one of two Abit BH6 boards and in a FIC
VA-503+ wouldn't work. (The Asus and Abit boards have Intel BX chipsets,
but the FIC utilizes a VIA chipset.)

I downloaded the latest drivers for the FA310TX (version 4.01; released
Nov. 11, 1998) and all the Netgear cards now work fine. Win98 also starts
and shuts down faster with the 4.01 drivers than it did with the 4.00
drivers. Maybe some of my problems were not so much with the shared IRQs
as with something else that was fixed in the new drivers. If you aren't
using the 4.01 drivers, why not try them out?
ftp://ftp-support.baynetworks.com/pub/swcode/netgear/fa310/Fa31v401.exe

By the way, there was a long pause (which made me uneasy) whenever I
installed drivers (either version) for these network cards. But they
seem to work fine.

Regards,
Bill

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