First post, by dionb
- Rank
- l33t++
Specs:
P3-650
Tekram PB640-A4X (i440BX)
S3 Virge GX2 AGP
Orchid Voodoo 1
Aztech AZT2320 SBRpro2+MPU401
AWE64 Gold
GUS
64MB RAM
16GB DiskOnModule
ATAPI DVD ROM
ATAPI ZIP
OS:
DOS 7.1
And I'm trying to get network connectivity working. I need to use a PCI NIC as all ISA slots are in use for sound cards.
NICS:
Intel EtherExpress Pro 100B with Crynwr packet driver (E100BPKT.COM)
3Com 3C905C-TX with 3Com official DOS driver (3C90XPD.COM)
With either NIC the packet driver recognizes the NIC and loads successfully, defaulting to software driver 0x60. Then the trouble starts when I try to run DHCP.EXE (from mTCP) to get an IP. WIth the E100, DHCP runs fine, but times out with no response. In my switch I can see the packets going out and the response from the router coming back - and being retransmitted when no confirmation is received. Setting a manual fixed IP doesn't help - other applications (like PING.EXE) also don't get a response. With the 3Com NIC, the system hangs when trying to communicate.
Now, DHCP.EXE helpfully suggests to check the hardware IRQ as particularly the Crynwr drivers are known to . Neither driver has an option to set the IRQ in the driver. As PCI cards, these get their IRQ via PnP. If I don't configure anything specifc (other than reserving IRQs 3, 5, 7 and 9 for the ISA cards), the NICs get IRQ 11. However I can force it to IRQ10 by reserving 11 too. That does not change behaviour.
Changing cables did not help, and the NICs are known good, in fact they work in this same system if I boot with a Knoppix (Linux) LIveCD.
I have cleared out CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, not loading any memory managers, but to no avail. Given the issue occurs with two different NICs with very different packet drivers, that work perfectly under other conditions or indeed OS on the same PC, I'm suspecting the NICs themselves aren't the problem. But what is?
So, anyone have any suggestions how to get this working?