Well... tried to install the stock Windows 95 drivers again and finally it decided to work properly. Now the next problem is trying to get an IP address, which it won't do. Again, I have it connected to my NETGEAR Router, which is an N600. Any suggestions?

Give it a static ip address and see what happens. Some older nics need to go though a 10/100 switch/hub to play nicely with more modern routers/networks.

Tried it. Still can't connect to the network. And unfortunately, I don't have a hub or a switch.

Can you ping 127.0.0.1 (loopback) if you cant ping that drivers are still not right.

Check you have the correct resources set Windows always gets my network cards IRQ wrong on a fresh install but if you believed windows everything is fine. Setting it manually to what I know is correct gives me a warning about changing resources but everything works suddenly
I'm not familiar with that particular card but I'm guessing the driver disk has a setup program where you assign IRQ plus less important stuff like frame type, etc or try another PCI slot and hope plug and play assigns it another one.

It's an ISA card so fitting it to a PCI slot will not work. Could be just a duff card, it happens.

What version of Windows 95? Also do you have another card you can use? Testing the loop back or trying another ISA slot is a good idea though.

Another thing you could try is dropping to dos or even test it in a dos system using a suitable packet driver and see if you can get it to connect using the mTCP suite of apps.

Is this the card?

Ok. I was able to do a loopback with no problems at all. Though, I tried to set it up in real DOS without starting Windows at all. Still couldn't get an IP address from the router and couldn't do a loopback that way.

@Caluser2000 Yes, that's the exact card that I'm using.

I take it you have the dos setup program for the card to set up its irq and base i/o address then. Does it have a half duplex/full duplex setting? If so try half duplex or whatever the opposing current setting is.

Unrelated but it's probably a good time to mention there was a Winsock update for Windows 95 as well- http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/184242

I suppose you mean this setup program:

Unfortunately, I couldn't get very far to installing the utility software as it doesn't detect the card, even in Windows and DOS with the packet driver successfully installed.

It should be run directly from dos without the need to load the packet driver. That's not a good sign then that the card is not detected.

if you get the Setup Programm to work, watch if theres an Option to switch between BNC and Twisted-Pair Connector.

Can you try the Card and Tool in another PC.

Or maybe, recove all other Cards you dont need for Dos and try Setup again.

I have two of these, they do this in Socket 7 boards... I set mine up in a 386 under DOS 6, but it was always finicky on the Win95 Pentium for some reason... Strange, given it is an NE2000 clone.

I ended up replacing it with a PCI card and permanently installing it into the 386 where it had no problem and is actually a good card, also ran the other one in a 486 for years before putting a PCI one in only because I had no spare ISA Ethernet cards for a non-PCI system I was messing with.

I Can't help wondering if it could be a clock dependency of some sort - i.e. the card does not like the ISA BUS operating outside of a very narrow window of acceptable frequencies. My 3C509 exhibits similar behavior in one of my 486's if I ramp up the BUS Clock and the configuration tool will either not detect it or permanently damage the card.

I see. Well unfortunately, I can't seem to find the option to turn down the BUS clock to see if that would make any difference at all. I even tried to do a clean floppy boot of MS-DOS 6.22 with the Ether16 drivers. Still no luck. Though, I do know that it detects it under Windows just fine. Just won't freaking get an IP address from the router. If I have the time and motivation to do so, I'll test it in another machine.

In addition, it also does have a tendency to not even initialize properly under Windows in some cases whenever I make hardware changes to the system and NOT even touch the network card at all. Strange.

EDIT: Did a little further testing. Have the SB16 and Yamaha sound card installed alongside. It appears that even though MPU-401 on the SB16 is set at 300 and is disabled, the Ether16 still complains and doesn't initialize. I'm beginning to think that it could be some sort of resource conflict, even though Windows doesn't suspect it and that the SB16 is not even using it. It's just strange, but the point being is that it started to initialize properly again once I've set the I/O address of the SB16's MPU-401 to 330, even though it's disabled.

Alright. I've pretty much given up on the Ether16. Though just to be sure, I'll see if I can try it on one of my 486 systems another time.

From my experience the setup program does not work or was only programmed for a later model Ether16 network card. Just use the NE2000.COM DOS packet driver or NE2000 compatible Windows drivers.

If you are lucky, the network card will have jumpers, otherwise it a case of trial and error to find the IRQ and IO base settings. 🙁