Hello Dave,

Did you make sure that the NIC actually works correctly?

I had many motherboards from that era with on-board components that cease to work. Particularly NICs, sound cards.

An easy way to confirm that it works is booting BartPE or a GNU/Linux live distro.

tauro wrote on 2024-07-31, 03:50:

Hello Dave, […]
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Hello Dave,

Did you make sure that the NIC actually works correctly?

I had many motherboards from that era with on-board components that cease to work. Particularly NICs, sound cards.

An easy way to confirm that it works is booting BartPE or a GNU/Linux live distro.

Thanks, I've not confirmed that the NIC actually works - not easy to put antoher OS on this system,
no cd/DVD, don't think this older MB supports boot flash...

Couple more bits of info - found and tried a SIS900 ODI driver (I can use PKTODI to make that work
as a packet driver) - almost but not quite the same result (hangs) .. the packet driver hangs but the
keyboard interrupt is still working as you can hit ctrl-alt-delete to reboot, but the ODI driver kills the
keyboard (prob. actually crashing) as you have to hard-reset.

Also tried a newer PCI Card (D-LINK 10/100 instead of the RealTek 10-only) - it has the
same issue (driver hangs) - so I'm now thinking maybe IRQ conflict or something like that)
going to fool around with manually configuring everything and see where it goes.

Really would like the on-board, as this is a "board mounter" system, and there are
no other cards. (Wouldn't hurt to have 100mbps either)

AFAIK the mainboard (with NIC) was working when I got it. When I build the DVD
Robot** I needed a crappy case to build it onto. A friend had just upgraded the oldest
machine in his lab (which was working) and gave me the whole thing. I only wanted
the case, so I tossed the MB in a box and just recently dug it out for a simple use..
** If anyone wants to see the "DVD Robot" :
"Daves Old Computers" -> "DVD Robot" (near bottom)

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

Weirdness - follow up - the on-board SIS900 NIC is working...

I'm not entirely sure why.

The PSU "somewhat failed" - the system would boot up but fail shortly after...
In testing, I happened to remove the hard drive - boot from floppy, and it worked
fine... More testing, the HD wasn't drawing too much power (but more than a 3.5"
floppy) and worked well in other systems...

I eventually took the board out and while testing on my bench it worked fine.
.. turns out the psu was failing and the one I use on the bench was fine...

ALso while on the bench, I happened to plug in a network cable, and tried loading
the packet driver - it worked and I could see the network!
-- and I also discovered that it the cable isn't plugged in the driver hangs

But... I'm not sure if I ever tried actually plugging in a network cable where
the system normally lives - I only had one there and it's used by another system.
so I might have just tried to see if one of several packet drivers I had for that
device would load... I don't know if the original problem was failing PSU/noise or
not having the cable connected...1

I do have one other system with a different NIC that also hangs if I try to load
the packet driver with no network cable ... so you'd think I might have thought
to test that...

But at least it's all working now and my "breadboard system" (no real case)
doesn't need cards in the open air anymore!

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

One caveat with the SiS900 if trying to determine if it works in other OS: this NIC is supported by a default Windows XP install - but the default drivers have a bug: they read the wrong address to determine the NIC's MAC address, a location which contains non-unique code. Consequence is that every system with a SiS900 and default WinXP drivers will show up on a network with the same MAC, which can/will cause layer 2 havoc as soon as you have more than one.

dionb wrote on 2025-02-24, 12:15:

One caveat with the SiS900 if trying to determine if it works in other OS: this NIC is supported by a default Windows XP install - but the default drivers have a bug: they read the wrong address to determine the NIC's MAC address, a location which contains non-unique code. Consequence is that every system with a SiS900 and default WinXP drivers will show up on a network with the same MAC, which can/will cause layer 2 havoc as soon as you have more than one.

Interesting - I'm running DOS on this system, and I'm using a "packet
driver" (provided by SIS) - Hopefully it doesn't have the same problem.

I have three different ones, and the two most recent do work, but
the oldest one fails:

102-08-16 12:21p       16,397 D:\SIS900.COM
2SiS 900/7016 PCI Adapters Packet Driver Version 1.15 (16/Aug/2002)
3(c) Copyright 2002 SiS Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
4Link Detected: 10Mb
5PhysicalLayer Set: AUTO
6Current Pmds: 0x00, num pmds: 0x01, hsm slot: 0x0004
7Driver Installed at Interrupt 0x60, I/O address 0xE800, IRQ 11
8Ethernet Address: 00:1C:25:37:FB:30
9
1023-12-26 12:47p       29,125 D:\SIS900.EXE
11SiS 900/7016 PCI Adapters Packet Driver Version 1.13 (1/Aug/2001)
12(c) Copyright 2000 SiS Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
13Link Detected: 10Mb
14PhysicalLayer Set: AUTO
15Current Pmds: 0x00, num pmds: 0x01, hsm slot: 0x0004
16Driver Installed at Interrupt 0x60, I/O address 0xE800, IRQ 11
17Ethernet Address: 00:1C:25:37:FB:30
18
1999-10-18  7:26p       22,947 D:\SIS900.EXE
20SiS 900/7016 PCI Adapters Packet Driver Version 1.05 (04/16/99)
21(c) Copyright 1998 SiS Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
22Error: can't initialize the hardware, errno = 7

The two that work do get the same MAC ... do you happen to know the MAC
address range that was assigned to SIS?
(or if anyone with a SIS900 can tell what it's MAC is - the first few
bytes should be the same)

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

DaveDDS wrote on 2025-02-24, 18:46:

Interesting - I'm running DOS on this system, and I'm using a "packet driver" (provided by SIS) - Hopefully it doesn't have the […]
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dionb wrote on 2025-02-24, 12:15:

One caveat with the SiS900 if trying to determine if it works in other OS: this NIC is supported by a default Windows XP install - but the default drivers have a bug: they read the wrong address to determine the NIC's MAC address, a location which contains non-unique code. Consequence is that every system with a SiS900 and default WinXP drivers will show up on a network with the same MAC, which can/will cause layer 2 havoc as soon as you have more than one.

Interesting - I'm running DOS on this system, and I'm using a "packet
driver" (provided by SIS) - Hopefully it doesn't have the same problem.

I have three different ones, and the two most recent do work, but
the oldest one fails:

Copy code to clipboard

102-08-16 12:21p       16,397 D:\SIS900.COM
2SiS 900/7016 PCI Adapters Packet Driver Version 1.15 (16/Aug/2002)
3(c) Copyright 2002 SiS Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
4Link Detected: 10Mb
5PhysicalLayer Set: AUTO
6Current Pmds: 0x00, num pmds: 0x01, hsm slot: 0x0004
7Driver Installed at Interrupt 0x60, I/O address 0xE800, IRQ 11
8Ethernet Address: 00:1C:25:37:FB:30
9
1023-12-26 12:47p       29,125 D:\SIS900.EXE
11SiS 900/7016 PCI Adapters Packet Driver Version 1.13 (1/Aug/2001)
12(c) Copyright 2000 SiS Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
13Link Detected: 10Mb
14PhysicalLayer Set: AUTO
15Current Pmds: 0x00, num pmds: 0x01, hsm slot: 0x0004
16Driver Installed at Interrupt 0x60, I/O address 0xE800, IRQ 11
17Ethernet Address: 00:1C:25:37:FB:30
18
1999-10-18  7:26p       22,947 D:\SIS900.EXE
20SiS 900/7016 PCI Adapters Packet Driver Version 1.05 (04/16/99)
21(c) Copyright 1998 SiS Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
22Error: can't initialize the hardware, errno = 7

The two that work do get the same MAC ... do you happen to know the MAC
address range that was assigned to SIS?
(or if anyone with a SIS900 can tell what it's MAC is - the first few
bytes should be the same)

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

That's not the famous duplicate MAC with Windows XP, that is 00:E0:06:09:55:66

To check the vendor for a MAC address, enter the OUI (first six octets) of the MAC into a search engine like this: https://macvendors.com/

Your MACs that start with 00:1C:25 correspond to Hon Hai Precision Industries. That might not sound familiar, but it's the company Foxconn hardware is registered to, so that's exactly what you'd expect with a Foxconn NIC (or at least: NIC on a Foxconn motherboard). If the printouts with the same 00:1C:25:37:FB:30 MAC is from the same physical NIC, that's also correct.

dionb wrote on 2025-02-24, 22:53:

To check the vendor for a MAC address, enter the OUI (first six octets) of the MAC into a search engine like this: https://macvendors.com/

Your MACs that start with 00:1C:25 correspond to Hon Hai Precision Industries. That might not sound familiar, but it's the company Foxconn hardware is registered to, so that's exactly what you'd expect with a Foxconn NIC (or at least: NIC on a Foxconn motherboard). If the printouts with the same 00:1C:25:37:FB:30 MAC is from the same physical NIC, that's also correct.

Thanks, useful to know.

Yes, the captures I quoted were from three different versions of the packet driver that I found while
initially trying to get the NIC working, but all were run on the same board/NIC (I would have been
concerned if they didn't get the same MAC - which is what I was testing for - I didn't know that the
wrong/duplicate MAC was known and sure to always be the same..

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal