At 14:28 05/16/00, Benjamin Hawes wrote:
>I recently installed a 3Com Etherlink 3c905c-tx-m Fast Ethernet PCI
>card on my DFI K6BV3+ board (it has an AMD k6-III 400 chip and 64 megs).
>It is recognized in the Device configuration screen, but I can't get any
>logon - it won't display the other computers in the network (I am
>connecting into a college ethernet system from my apartment). Someone
>from the college came and tested the wires and the jack, and both are
>good. I spent 1 1/2 hours on the line with a guy @ 3Com, but we couldn't
>make any headway. He suggested I go through a complete uninstall/reinstall
>of all of the Dial-Up networking files...So I uninstalled the driver,
>physically removed the card, and followed the instructions. At the end of
>it all, it's exactly the same -- no logon. The diagnostic tool that
>came with the card says that the network connection works, but when I run
>the diagnostic tool on the NIC itself, it crashes thae computer and
>restarts it.


Hi Benjamin

Two things come to my mind...

Busmastering PCI devices do not work if they are put in PCI slots that
are hardwired (on the motherboard) to share IRQs. I'd look at the
motherboard manual and be sure that the NIC's PCI slot is not hardwired
to share with another PCI slot...or the AGP slot, IDE controllers,or USB.
(Just because Windows says that a PCI device is not sharing an IRQ doesn't
ecessarily mean it is not sharing an IRQ line at the hardware level.)

I had this happen twice where Windows reported no resource conflicts but
the NIC just wouldn't work. Moving the NIC to another PCI slot worked in
these two cases. In a third case, I bought a Kingston *non-busmastering*
PCI NIC (as specified by Kingston) and this worked in any PCI slot. This
would be an option in the case where there aren't enough slots with
unique IRQs.

Another problem I have heard of is failure of some 3Com 3c905 NICs to
correctly autodetect correct speed (10 Mbps or 100 Mbps) or duplex setting
depending on the network's hardware. (The case I recall was on a major
University network like yours.) Changing to another brand NIC might be a
worthwhile troubleshooting step. (Can you borrow a different NIC? If not,
there are many PCI good NICs to be had for around $20.) Have you tried
manually setting the speed and duplex settings of the NIC? (A different
version 3c905 might even help here....a 3c905b based NIC for example.)

Also, before you physically remove the card (to try another PCI slot, to
reinstall the drivers, or to try another card) don't forget to first
remove it from Device Manager or by using the Add/Remove hardware applet.
Otherwise it will still remain in the registry as a hidden device.

Regards,
Bill

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