On 18-May-01 Jenny_Hopkins@toby-churchill.com wrote:
Hello all, I have been given the following info from someone at LNO on trying to get a 3com NIC to work (one that was given to me by an alug member at the last meet, as it happens). Can anyone confirm this is indeed a good thing to do? I tried for a while to get a Dlink card working, then changed it for this 3com one, which I'm not having much success with either. "3c509 isa cards are PnP jumperless nic's - they were designed to work with winders PnP (work great out of the box for that) in linux, it no worky-worky. you have internet access from a winders pc? if yes, then download disk 2 from here (this link is kicking my butt!!)
\http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/detail.jsp?tab=support&pathtype=suppo... u=3C509B-COMBO and boot the pc with a dos/winders boot disk - run the PNPDSABL.BAT utility to turn off PnP, then run 3c5x9cfg.exe to set the irq and mem addy you want (i like 10/300 )- after this, you should be good to go" I duly downloaded the disk2, copied it to /tmp on the linux box, started to reboot the linux box with a 95 startup disk, then bottled out and plopped the disk out before it could boot, in a fit of underconfidence at my noncomprehension.
First of all a dos disk is less scary than a windows disk as dos is less aggresive, provided you dont have a drdos system. dos douse not overright the boot sector unless you ask it to, but as far as I know this is windows's only attack on linux. I also suggest that dos is better at the command line level, I have a "revenge of dos" disk in storage in manchester designed for the very problem you have in mind (Shows you what I used to do when I had to try to get DOS and win 95 to coexist, and for the job you are doing). Any dos disk (after version 3.3) should do though. I would have though freedos could do the job as well.
That asside windows tries to isolate the hardware when ruunning like unix does so changing settings for irq/mem is normally done in dos for isa cards.
What I should do is go ahead, if you are rearly rearly worried take out your hard disk cables before you start but this should not be nesisary.
follow the instructions do the job and in the words of dougles adams
DONT PANIC
I have done this many times and all will go well I am sure.
Owen
PS one elonex computer (I had at my old job) refused to work without a 3c905b card in it, and NT blue screened every two mins, even after a reinstall untill I put it back so I have some mistrust of the card and elonex's ever since.
The actual history behind the thread at LNO in the first place is here: http://www.linuxnewbie.org/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f... 004362 Thanks, Jenny
alug, the Anglian Linux User Group list Send list replies to alug@stu.uea.ac.uk http://www.anglian.lug.org.uk/ http://rabbit.stu.uea.ac.uk/cgi-bin/listinfo/alug See the website for instructions on digest or unsub!
Date: 18-May-01 Time: 12:50:48