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486 Issues Recognising 3Com EtherLink III 3C509B-C Rev A

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First post, by benjibarnicals

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Hey all,

It's been a while since I've been on these forums (Covid and life getting in the way), but i've been tinkering with my old 486 Viglen PC (Reliving my 486 Days...) a little here and there, got a nice Win3.11 build etc. More topics to follow about this on other threads soon! Anyway...

I wanted to get it hooked up to my local LAN where I store files on a NAS, maybe try out some Netscape goodness, and a little network Doom. Anyway I got hold of a 3Com 3C509BC as it was fairly easy to pick up. Got the drivers for it (a self extracting executable 3C509BX2.exe) drivers installed in Windows fine, even got hold of the TCP protocol (TCP32B) all fine, however, the card just isn't getting recognised, I see no activity with it (LED's etc), the same in DOS, if I try 3C5x9xcfg.exe it comes back saying no NIC's found.

I tried the card in another retro PC (A Dell Pentium 2/333 with Windows 2000) which has some ISA slots. It was immediately recognised, connected and worked like a charm.

So, I'm a little stumped, I've tried moving the card into different ISA slots (that I know work as they've been used with other cards), and no joy. I'm not sure where to go next, hoping you guys might have some insight!

Ben

Reply 1 of 4, by MMaximus

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have you tried putting the card in your Pentium machine, running the 3C5X9XCFG utility to change the configuration of the card (IRQ, I/O) then putting it back in the 486 machine with the new settings? There might be a hardware conflict in the 486

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Reply 2 of 4, by Grzyb

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That card may be in PNP mode, which may be problematic with stuff earlier than Pentium/Win9x...
so, try PNPDSABL.BAT

In 2003, I voted in favour of joining the European Union. However, due to recent developments - especially the restrictions on cash usage - I'm hereby withdrawing my support. DOWN WITH THE EU!

Reply 3 of 4, by benjibarnicals

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Ahhh thank you both!

Maximum, I hadn't thought about that, really good idea! I'll give that a try and see what its been set up as. Is there a quick way in Win3.11 or DOS I can find out what IRQ/IO is free/available? The BIOS doesn't give anything away.

And certainly, will give the pnp BAT a go, would that help fix things in Windows? What does that bat script do?

Reply 4 of 4, by benjibarnicals

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Grzyb, thanks ever so much, your suggestion worked! The card must of been in PNP mode, as that bat file disabled it, and voila! The NIC was recognised by the config utility in DOS. Thank you!

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