VOGONS


First post, by dada

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Hi there. I was wondering if you could help me. I'm somewhat puzzled by my network card, which just doesn't want to install under Windows 95.

IMAG0845.jpg

It's an RTL8139C card. I found the drivers online (from Realtek), since I don't have an install CD myself. I ran the diagnostics program in pure DOS mode and it seemed to work. (It didn't work when running the same program inside Win95 though.)

But when I installed the drivers in Windows 95, it just wouldn't work at all:

IMAG0862.jpg

And another funny thing is that when I restarted the computer to complete the install, suddenly it found new hardware, a Realtek RTL8139/810X and proceeded to install it. But that one also doesn't work.

I really don't know what to do, even after installing the TCP/IP protocol and restarting, winipcfg tells me it can't do anything and the hardware properties says it's got "error code 2" and tells me to install different drivers.

Anybody know what might be up with this?

PS: if it's easier to fix this problem, by buying a different card that works out of the box with Windows 95 instead of going through a driver hell, I'd be open for that too!

Reply 1 of 18, by AdamP

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Just a thought, the driver says Fast Ethernet, but your diagnostic program says 10Mbps (Fast Ethernet is 100Mpbs). Perhaps you need a different driver?

Reply 2 of 18, by dada

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AdamP wrote:

Just a thought, the driver says Fast Ethernet, but your diagnostic program says 10mbps. Perhaps you need a different driver?

I'm pretty sure it's a 10/100mbit card, since I bought it a couple of years ago. Still, you're probably right and I'll go searching for some other drivers. If anyone knows a good place where I can find them, that would be useful. Somehow it's harder than I thought to find them.

Reply 3 of 18, by AdamP

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dada wrote:
AdamP wrote:

Just a thought, the driver says Fast Ethernet, but your diagnostic program says 10mbps. Perhaps you need a different driver?

I'm pretty sure it's a 10/100mbit card, since I bought it a couple of years ago. Still, you're probably right and I'll go searching for some other drivers. If anyone knows a good place where I can find them, that would be useful. Somehow it's harder than I thought to find them.

You're right. According to Realtek, it's a 10/100 card. Are you only using a cat3 cable?

As it works in the diagnostic program, the problem may be some sort of resource conflict (but I don't see a resources tab, so I may be wrong).

Reply 4 of 18, by leileilol

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I have this card. I had to set 10mbit Half Duplex, on an OLDER DRIVER.

WinNT and derivatives handle it better. You also know what handles it better?
Windows ME

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Reply 5 of 18, by dada

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All I did was make some standard loopback test, I'm not sure if it tested connectivity. But I do think that its success means it can at least talk to the card. So it might be some resource conflict, but Windows seems to say it isn't.

I'm using a standard cat5 cable that I know to work (used it before earlier today on a different machine).

edit: thanks leileilol, I'll give it a try.

edit: I was able to set it to 10mbit half duplex but that didn't seem to have any effect. Do you remember where you downloaded the driver?

Reply 6 of 18, by MaxWar

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Ive recently been through the same thing as you ...
Its really a pain to get those NICs to work under old windows. Under win 3.11 I tried pretty much every combinations with 3 different drivers for the RTL8139 with two different cards. It would not work. I ended up digging up a RTL8029as from another machine and found a driver that worked with it in windows 3.1.

Then i installed win95, no win95 drivers worked for my 8029as. I ended up trying the same driver i used for win 3.11 and it worked ... go figure.

Reply 7 of 18, by dada

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Yeah, networking is apparently always difficult. I never had a problem with it on Windows 98, but I'd prefer to run 95. Maybe I could use 98lite, if that's still available somewhere...

It would be kind of nice, just as an alternative for if I can't get this to work, if anyone could tell me the name of an ethernet card that works out of the box in Windows 95. Something that I could buy via eBay or something.

Reply 8 of 18, by AdamP

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dada wrote:

Yeah, networking is apparently always difficult. I never had a problem with it on Windows 98, but I'd prefer to run 95. Maybe I could use 98lite, if that's still available somewhere...

It would be kind of nice, just as an alternative for if I can't get this to work, if anyone could tell me the name of an ethernet card that works out of the box in Windows 95. Something that I could buy via eBay or something.

Just search the Windows 95 driver database for a NIC that's also available on Ebay. They should work on Windows 95. Most of them are probably ISA and 10mbps though.

98lite is available at http://www.litepc.com/

Reply 9 of 18, by jwt27

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I have the same network card, working in DOS at 100Mb full-duplex using these drivers. Win/mac/unix drivers are also included.

Reply 10 of 18, by MrKsoft

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I have one of these cards and I can't get it to work in anything at all. Detected fine by all OSes I've tried (Win95, 98, XP) but won't talk to anything else on the network. It's probably just a dead card, though.

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Reply 11 of 18, by dada

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jwt27 wrote:

I have the same network card, working in DOS at 100Mb full-duplex using these drivers. Win/mac/unix drivers are also included.

Thanks! I'll give this a try tomorrow. 😀

Reply 13 of 18, by Chewhacca

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Had the same problem with the same card, double check that you downloaded the correct driver for it from realtek's website.

Reply 14 of 18, by elianda

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Hmm, I never had such problems. The main point is, that for Win98SE and newer you can use the WDM architecture drivers, for Win95 you have to use the older/other drivers. But it is written in the readme.

For RTL8029 cards it's noteworthy to mention that the default drivers that come with windows are buggy in this way that data corruption can occur. So better install the current realtek drivers.

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Reply 15 of 18, by dada

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jwt27 wrote:

I have the same network card, working in DOS at 100Mb full-duplex using these drivers. Win/mac/unix drivers are also included.

Thanks for the drivers, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work yet. It's strange because I'm positive these are the correct drivers for my card. It's now properly installed as a 10MB/100MB PCI Fast Ethernet Card (and I actually remember using it with this name under Windows 98 before, though that was with a completely different machine).

Some progress, though. I removed the USB PCI card and put the network card in its slot, just to see if that would make a difference. Not really. But with these new drivers, at least I'm getting a positive I/O test with the card:

IMAG0867.jpg

Like last time, both tests work when using pure DOS mode.

Also, I didn't notice this before, but the motherboard actually recognizes the card as well:

IMAG0868.jpg

I really don't get why this thing doesn't work under Windows 95. 🙁

Reply 17 of 18, by dada

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DosFreak wrote:

Does it work with a LiveCD? (guess you might have to use PLOP with a system that old)

Tiny core linux, etc..

That's a good idea, will give it a try soon.

But first I need to buy some more CDs because I burned up all my old ones moving tiny driver files around 😁

Reply 18 of 18, by dada

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Alright, I managed to finally fix the problem thanks to the drivers Elianda sent me. They contained a setup program (in the zip file it's Realtek8139/dos/disk/oem-8139(500)/EXE/Setup.exe) as well and after I ran that setup program it correctly detected and installed the card. Thanks! 😀