Double check the IRQ settings...
Re: Cant connect my Windows 95 machine to my home network

could be the router. I notice some newer routers dont support 10mbps.

Any identifying model numbers of the card? "NE2000 compatible" is a rough standard like SoundBlaster compatible.
Like soundcards often the actual card had better drivers available including tools to set/test the cards resources

Thanks everyone for your replies

IRQ: Tried IRQ, no luck. Could try disabling LPT, COM and removing the sound card to try on IRQ5...

Card ID: I can't find anything that ID's this card beyond the "NE2000" compatible sticker. Under that sticker I should be able to read the IC number, but I don't know if that could help (seems to be a generic card).

Router: I have an Archer A9. Will see if I can find an older router and try that.

Thanks again!

How's the rest of your network look like? If you have mostly gigabit equipment then you may need a different(ly wired) cable for this card. They come in two basic flavors, straight and crossover. Modern GB cards don't usually care and will work with either, switching the RX/TX pins on their own when necessary; an old NE2K can't do that.

Does your board happen to use a via chipset?

elszgensa wrote on 2023-06-14, 16:33:

How's the rest of your network look like? If you have mostly gigabit equipment then you may need a different(ly wired) cable for this card. They come in two basic flavors, straight and crossover. Modern GB cards don't usually care and will work with either, switching the RX/TX pins on their own when necessary; an old NE2K can't do that.

So long as the switch (or router) supports Auto MDIX then the cable won’t matter even if the NIC expects a certain cable pinout.

I’m expecting this to be a case of auto-negotiation of 10-baseT full-duplex not working. Older kit never did handle auto-negotiation very well.

Can you set the router switchport and the NIC to a hard-coded speed and duplex (that matches)?

Maybe try ruling out the Windows driver side of things by booting with the universal tcp/ip boot disk. It has support for NE2000: https://www.netbootdisk.com/floppy/cards.htm

paradigital wrote on 2023-06-14, 16:57:

I’m expecting this to be a case of auto-negotiation of 10-baseT full-duplex not working.

I dont think NE2000 could even do full duplex 😀 later enhanced clones like RTL8019AS could, but those are usually way less problematic. If anything switch might have problem with half-duplex 😀

It seems I'm stuck for now. I don't have a floppy drive and my attempt to make a SD-to-FDD converter (using FDDemu on Arduino) failed, and I don't have an older router to test. I tried with a 12 year old router directly to the NIC and I get no ip.

I also tried another driver that seems to be compatible, one from realtek, but same issues.

Thanks for your help, greatly appreciated! didn't know about that boot disk at all. Will post again as soon as I can do more tests.

That sounds like a software issue. Maybe post a photo of your ne2000 nic card here?

I also think its software issue, especially seeing its Realtek based cards, those were made in much more civilized times. I think RTL8019 was released in 1995. .. that is unless squareoctopus used realtek driver on random nic 😀

squareoctopus lets start with basics. What windows? did you ever configure lan before? Configure static ip from same subnet as your router (and correct mask) and try pinging it. Do 'arp -a' in command prompt after.

It's entirely possible that I used a wrong driver, I'm going to check out what chip the card actually has, and send pictures of both card and chip. It's Win98 SE

I'm confident that I know how to setup a LAN, but, just in case, this is what I did:
- ipconfig /all, got the mac address of my adapter.
- Router: reserverd an unused IP and bound it to the mac address.
- Click on TCP/IP (bound to the adapter, checked), and set the ip manually to the one reserverd, same as subnet mask.
- For default gateway, I added the router IP to the list. Same as my config in the modern computer.
- For DNS, since this is a menu that I can't remember from back in the day, I tried 3 things: without config, with the router IP as the default, and also with Google's DNSs.

TCP/IP seems to be working, if I ping 127.0.0.1 it works fine. But if I ping my router I get no reply, and if I ping "google.com" I get "unknown host".

Will try "arp -a", don't know what it does, and will report.

Can you also post up a few pics of your network configuration in Windows? Adapter properties and all the tabs within.

squareoctopus wrote on 2023-06-15, 15:51:

- ipconfig /all, got the mac address of my adapter. - Router: reserverd an unused IP and bound it to the mac address. ... - For […]
Show full quote

- ipconfig /all, got the mac address of my adapter.
- Router: reserverd an unused IP and bound it to the mac address.
...
- For default gateway, I added the router IP to the list. Same as my config in the modern computer.
- For DNS, since this is a menu that I can't remember from back in the day, I tried 3 things: without config, with the router IP as the default, and also with Google's DNSs.

forget that, lets start by ascertaining if the network card works at all

squareoctopus wrote on 2023-06-15, 15:51:

- Click on TCP/IP (bound to the adapter, checked), and set the ip manually to the one reserverd, same as subnet mask.

details, what ip/mask is your router, what did you configure on the pc

squareoctopus wrote on 2023-06-15, 15:51:

if I ping my router I get no reply

-bad card
-bad cable
-bad configuration

squareoctopus wrote on 2023-06-15, 15:51:

Will try "arp -a", don't know what it does, and will report.

do that after trying to ping your router, will tell us if Layer 2 ethernet is working

Will do, but before: This card has a UM9008F chip. Does anyone have the correct drivers for this card? Or should the "NE2000 compatible" one work?

"NE2000 compatible" definitely should work, but...
- first, you need to configure the card using the chip-specific utility, hopefully the attached stuff will work
- second, make sure the "NE2000 compatible" driver provided with Windows is configured with the same settings, again - Re: Cant connect my Windows 95 machine to my home network

squareoctopus wrote on 2023-06-16, 04:07:

Will do, but before: This card has a UM9008F chip. Does anyone have the correct drivers for this card? Or should the "NE2000 compatible" one work?

something else you can try is running a packet sniffer (tcpdump or wireshark) from another machine on your LAN and seeing if you see any broadcast traffic (ARP) coming from the NE2000 card while you try to ping/etc. winipcfg should be able to give you its MAC address so that you know what to look for in the packet log.

Grzyb wrote on 2023-06-16, 04:33:

"NE2000 compatible" definitely should work, but...
- first, you need to configure the card using the chip-specific utility, hopefully the attached stuff will work
- second, make sure the "NE2000 compatible" driver provided with Windows is configured with the same settings, again - Re: Cant connect my Windows 95 machine to my home network

Excellent! will try this! Thanks!

jakethompson1 wrote on 2023-06-16, 04:40:

something else you can try is running a packet sniffer (tcpdump or wireshark) from another machine on your LAN and seeing if you see any broadcast traffic (ARP) coming from the NE2000 card while you try to ping/etc. winipcfg should be able to give you its MAC address so that you know what to look for in the packet log.

Thanks! Will try this after I've discarded driver and hw config.