Mike,
Per Jonathan Freed's response, I might be mistaken, but I've never seen
an option to disable PNP on a PCI card. Usually the PCI card inherits
the IRQ from the slot its in. One usually needs to assign the IRQ to
the slot. With some motherboards you can set PCI to follow ISA, ie ISA
first then PCI with what's left. Now with 3Com Etherlink III PNP which
are 16bit not PCI; you can modify the configuration on the card and
disable PNP. When you disable PNP you need to reboot the computer and
then you can change the IRQ and I/O. But if you leave PNP the IRQ and
I/O show PNP and you get the value inherited by the slot. With 3Com
diagnostics you can "view" your card settings. You can see the IRQ and
I/O assigned by the slot. Then you can set STN accordingly. But I've
always found that, with 3Com 3c509B (Etherlink III), under STN I always
set the card to "PNP disable" and needed to set the IRQ to AUTO and
needed to set the base address to what the card was set to.
The reason for this info Mike, is that you may need to play around with
your BIOS to set the IRQ for the slot and then play around with IRQ
settings in STN (ie, auto) for a PCI card. With a 16Bit card in a
Compaq, you need to set the IRQ and I/O under add-in cards in the BIOS.
Again, even though the Etherlink III gave me PNP and the ability to
disable it, I could never get my CTX (see previous message) to configure
this Etherlink or a Linksys 16Bit card.
Now, today, I was just setting up Win95 machine on an older Compaq 2000
(Presario) Pentium 100MHZ. Again in order to get the 3Com Etherlink III
to work, I needed to change the IRQ and I/O in the BIOS. The 3Com
Etherlink III was set for PNP and Compaq originally set the card to IRQ
= 3 and I/O = 210, but I wanted it set to IRQ = 10 and I/O =300 (like to
leave 3 for Serial), and as it appeared free, I set the BIOS that way.
Sure enough I had trouble with Win95 reading the settings wrong (it
remained at IRQ = 3 and I/O = 210 even after I deleted the card from
system and let it refind it). When I changed Win95 to IRQ = 10 and I/O
=300 it said something unknown had been set to IRQ 10. I thought it was
just confusing this card. When I went back into the BIOS, 10 was
unavailable yet I/O = 300 was available. IRQ 11 was free so I used
that, changed Windows and got on the network. The moral of the story is
that sometimes you just have to keep playing around till everything
falls in place. Then again, too much playing around with no results is
agonizing.
Per you last e-mail to me and STN:
> So, even with an ISA, non-P&P, NIC card, do I still have to configure
> the BIOS and tell it that the card's there?
Yes, set the add-in card parameter for ISA on the Compaq for all 16bit
cards.
>
> My main 486 that's used currently for the router works fine.
> Normally, I'd leave it there, but I'm trying to get set up in
> anticipation of having a cable or DSL connection in the next 6
> months, once either the cable company or Pacbell get their act
> together and install it into the neighborhood. I'm reluctant to have
> them install the NIC they will provide to that machine, because there
> are specific exclusions about using a router on my end of the wire,
> and I'd rather not advertise what my intentions are. Furthermore,
> most of the documentation I've seen on these modems indicates that a
> Pentium processor is required for installation. I believe this is
> just because they're set up to do it with Windows, and won't support
> a Linux-based platform.
>
> My plan was to have the Pentium machine there, with probably Windows
> on the hard drive, normally running as my router with a floppy-based
> boot disk. Then, when they come over, boot it to Windows, let them
> do their stuff, and when they leave, reboot it with STN and remove
> the hard drive again to put back in place as my paperweight. Or,
> even better, go back to using the 486 with STN, and use the Pentium
> as my Linux playground.
>
I use a DX4-100 with 16MB ram as my STN box in an AT&T cable
environment. And with multiple computers on at the same time, one
downloading stock info every minute, the only delay I see is with AT&T
at certain times of the night, not STN. Again I've turned others on to
STN, with cable, in 486 boxes and all is well. I think the net itself
is slowing and shared cable bandwidth can be more the issues these days.
These guys who set this up are cable guys. And they only support
Windows on fast computers. All they need to do is pull in the cable and
leave if you want them too. And they would be glad to that, usually, if
you sign off that all is OK. At a client of mine, AT&T couldn't load
their CD-ROM to install their stuff on a Win98 workstation. I told them
all about STN and they didn't even know that one can setup a gateway
like STN. The cable guys, although computer "novices" were excited
about STN and I gave them the web site and earned their trust when I
started telling them all about IP masquerading and NAT. (Again, they'll
sell you a dedicated IP for each computer on your network at $5 per
month each, for the reset of your life if you want.) At that they left,
me and the cable modem to configure on my own. In some parts of
Chicago, they use dedicated IP's and need to provide you with domain
info and the like. So just get the info and set it up yourself. Or
just play dumb and tell them after they pull in the line, that your
computer quit working, and you will call them back to finish it off
later. Just get the info you need and send them happily on their way.
And your last statement is the best, I think. "go back to using the 486
with STN, and use the Pentium
as my Linux playground".
Good Luck,
Arnie
Mike Jesch wrote:
>
> On 2 Feb 00 at 12:12, Jonathan Freed wrote:
>
> > I have the very same card in my gateway. What you need to do my friend is
> > disable plug and play on the card.
> >
> > To do this :
> > 1. find the disk that came with your NIC.
> > 2. stick a Dos or WIN bootdisk in your gateway and boot off it.
> > 2. put the NIC disk in. (duh i know)
> > 4. CD to the UTLITIES dir.
> > 5. run SETUP (or DIAG works too).
> > 6. disable plug and play.
> > 7. set the settings and save it to the EPROM by pressing F10 (i think).
> > 8. reboot and setup your router to match the new settings.
> >
> > hope that helps... if not
> > check your BIOS and make sure you disable Plug and Play there. I had to do
> > that to let Linux load up on one of my computers...
>
> Thanks... But I can't see any way in the DIAG program that will
> disable P&P on the NIC. I also can't find a way to disable P&P in
> the Compaq setup program. There is a window where the Compaq setup
> program tells me a few options for BIO and IRQ for the NIC, but I
> can't change it to a more "normal" 0x300 for example, it insists on
> 0x1000 or 0x7000 - 0x7F00.
>
> Interestingly, the RedHat Linux (5.1 I think) hard drive I had laying
> around boots right up on that machine, even though the hardware
> configuration is quite different than the 486 I had it in. Of
> course, it doesn't recognise eth0 either.
>
> During the STN boot, I get a couple messages I wasn't expecting:
>
> SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
> SIOCSIFNETMASK: No such device
> SIOCSIFBRDADDR: No such device
> SIOCADDRT: No such device
>
> Any ideas what these mean?
>
> Just for kicks, I just re-installed an Intel EtherExpress 16 card
> I've got, configured it for IRQ 10, BIO 0x300, reburned by STN
> diskette with an Intel EtherExpress driver, and it seems to be
> working fine. Only problem is, I only have 10-base-2 (or whatever a
> coax connector is) and AUI connectors on the back of the card, so I
> have to hang an AUI to RJ-45 adaptor on the back to make it talk to
> the rest of my network. A bit of a pain, but not the end of the
> world.
>
> Mike Jesch
>
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