ASUS P5A-B Wireless Adapter Troubleshooting \ VOGONS

ASUS P5A-B Wireless Adapter Troubleshooting

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First post, by AceTomato

Posted on 2019-05-19, 18:07

AceTomato Offline

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I have an issue here that has been stumping me for about 2-3 months and I cannot seem to figure it out.

Here's what I'm working with:
Asus P5A-B Motherboard (Bios: Version 1011.005 Beta Version)
AMD K-6-III+/550ACZ CPU (100x5.5)
512 MB PC100 CL2 RAM
Promise Ultra133 disk controller
Matrox G550 AGP Graphics card
**I'm not even sure what else you all might want/need to know--Please let me know what else I can provide that will be of use**

Here's the situation: I've got this thing running just fine with one exception. I cannot--for the life of me--get a wireless PCI adapter to work. I can plug in a 3COM 3C515-tx on an ISA slot & connect a wifi receiver to that, but PCI wireless cards DO NOT work.

I've tried:
a TP-Link TL-WN851ND 300Mbps Wireless-N PCI Adapter
a Linksys WMP600N Dual-Band Wireless-N PCI Adapter
a Linksys WMP54GR 54Mbps Wireless-G PCI Adapter

I have a Linksys WMP11 11Mbps Wireless-B PCI Adapter in the mail to me now for trial....

Widows XP cannot see them once it loads. They don't show up in device manager, and windows doesn't even try to ask me to install them. If I start the installation software from the manufacturer Windows will restart just fine and still NOT see the adapter. Strange.

I've tried swapping PCI ports, adjusting BIOS settings, playing with XP settings, Googling/Youtubing...no success. I'm sure I'm missing something here.

I'm perfectly happy to try any suggestions and answer any question you all might have to help here--Am I running down a rabbit hole? Is there something about this mobo that prevents wifi cards from functioning? Please advise, and thank you!

Is there another better option for a computer like this?

Last edited by AceTomato on 2019-05-19, 21:15. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 1 of 4, by dionb

Posted on 2019-05-19, 18:47

dionb Offline

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Could it be a PCI revision thing? ALi's Aladdin V has a PCI 2.1 bus, possibly the NICs need PCI 2.2. Easy way to check: this behaviour is known for the Realtek RTL8139C (note the C!) Ethernet chip. That happens to be - by a wide margin - the commonest PCI NIC around. See if one of them shows the same behaviour.

Note that the i440BX also only does PCI 2.1, so it's by no means an ALi oddity here. Back around 2003, when this sort of chipset was still in day-to-day use compatibility issues with the 8139C were infamous.

If you don't think that's it, post the exact NIC model/part numbers so we can look them up on Wikidevi.

Reply 2 of 4, by AceTomato

Posted on 2019-05-19, 21:30

AceTomato Offline

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dionb wrote:
Could it be a PCI revision thing? ALi's Aladdin V has a PCI 2.1 bus...

It's possible--I haven't looked into this yet, but now I'm excited. Here are the cards I've tried:
a TP-Link TL-WN851ND 300Mbps Wireless-N PCI Adapter
a Linksys WMP600N Dual-Band Wireless-N PCI Adapter
a Linksys WMP54GR 54Mbps Wireless-G PCI Adapter

I also have a Linksys WMP11 11Mbps Wireless-B PCI Adapter in the mail to me now for trial....

You also said:

dionb wrote:
......possibly the NICs need PCI 2.2. .

Before I proceed I need to understand something:
If the mobo is PCI 2.1 compliant, does that mean that 2.2/2.3 cards will not work? If so, do we know of any PCI 2.1 wireless cards that would work?

When you say:

dionb wrote:
...Easy way to check: this behaviour is known for the Realtek RTL8139C (note the C!) Ethernet chip. That happens to be - by a wide margin - the commonest PCI NIC around. See if one of them shows the same behaviour.

Are you saying that this Realtek is known to work, or known to not work? Apologies--I'm not following. Thank you!

Reply 3 of 4, by dionb

Posted on 2019-05-20, 17:39

dionb Offline

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Most PCI 2.2 cards are backwards-compatible with PCI 2.1, but some are not.

The RTL8139C is NOT compatible with PCI 2.1 buses. So if the PCI WiFi NICs work in the same systems that the RTL8139C works in, and the RTL8139C fails in the same ones, it's probably the PCI compatibility issue.

Reply 4 of 4, by AceTomato

Posted on 2019-07-09, 02:42

AceTomato Offline

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Rank: Newbie
Posts: 14
Joined: 2019-02-07, 16:48

Ok, I found one.

For some reason I'm able to get a Trendnet Tew-623pi wireless pci adapter to work (revision 1). Don't know why, but it's solid. Hope this helps anyone looking for the same thing.

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