Need help with an old ISA card!

[Soccerman]

I have this old ISA NIC card. it's plugged in and everything, the LEDs on it are live, so it's recieving power, but the BIOS and windows doesn't seem to detect it at all!

I have it plugged into some CAT 5 cable which is connected to a NIC on another computer, which is running fine. I noticed that every so often, the RX LED on my undetected NIC flashes when the TX on the other working NIC flashes, so I know that it works, I just gotta get it to be SEEN in windows!

btw, I was trying to use NE2000 drivers, but they didn't work, simply because the card didn't exist to the computer. this card was made in 1992, and is made by SMC. I don't know the model number, and I got it from a Friend on Anandtech (Budman). I'm pretty sure that it works, and drivers aren't a problem, just getting the BIOS to see it.

 

[RSI]

'Evening, Mike.

Interesting problem... I don't see why you need the BIOS to detect the NIC, it should work fine just as it is. What OS are you running? Does it not show up at all in the device manager?

-RSI

 

[stultus]

Well if it's an ancient ISA card, you might check the jumpers on the card. Chances are it's not plug-and-play (GASP!). I had this same epiphany recently when working with an old 3Com and Win98. IIRC there's an input/output range (or is it memory range) bank of jumpers and an IRQ bank. You have to set those on the card and then manually add the card in Windows and then set these options in the device manager.

 

[Soccerman]

I'm running Windows 98.

AFAIK, most, if not ALL expansion cards need to be initialized by the BIOS (which is why you have the option for the OS to configure the devices, 'PnP OS Installed: Enabled').

forgot to mention, that it is not seen in the Device manager.

Well if it's an ancient ISA card, you might check the jumpers on the card. Chances are it's not plug-and-play (GASP!). I had this same epiphany recently when working with an old 3Com and Win98. IIRC there's an input/output range (or is it memory range) bank of jumpers and an IRQ bank. You have to set those on the card and then manually add the card in Windows and then set these options in the device manager.

well this card has jumpers, two of them. both have the option 'Soft.'

that's what both are set to currently. I thought perhaps I would still be able to get it running the 'normal' way. so you're sure I have to do it that way?

 

[Vincent]

What stultus said is correct. In the days before PnP, you had to use jumpers to set the IRQs and I/O ports for the card. This is what the BIOS does if your ISA card is PnP. However, your card is either so old that it doesn't support PnP or it isn't set to PnP mode. Some ISA NICs let you have the option of turning on PnP support so that they will be able to take advantage of a PnP BIOS if one is available.

I would look at the SMC website and try to find the driver diskette for the card. On the driver disk will be some setup utilities which might let you turn on PnP.

 

[RSI]

If "PNP OS" is enabled, I would disable it, and set the resources manually using the jumpers.

-RSI

 

[stultus]

Or I would leave it enabled (so as not to cause any problems with your existing hardware) and set it manually. If it's set manually your "PnP OS" setting shouldn't make a difference one way or the other.

 

[Soccerman]

ok, I've set one jumper so that it uses IRQ3, I/O 280, RAM (?) D0000, and the other jumper to ROM address D8000..

btw, the other option for the second jumper is soft/none, so there might not be a ROM address.

btw, I'm not turning off the PnP OS Installed, becuase that'll create more headaches.

the problem now, is that I've installed the NE2000 drivers, and the device manager reports that they correspond to IRQ 3, and I/O 280-29F, but it still has an exclamation mark beside it. shouldn't there be some other settings (like that RAM one) that I have to tweak? if so, how would I get at them??

btw, the NIC doesn't appear to work yet.

and finally, the first jumper has a second option (besides the one it's on, and the 'Soft' setting. that is, I/O: 300, IRQ: 10, and RAM: CC000. but I suspect that won't help.

 

[stultus]

Okay, I think that second jumper should be "none." I vaguely remember using that setting in my experience and finding out that it was a setting used in pre-Windows technology. Anyone else back me up?

Edit: Just edited my reply in response to your edit. We should stop editing, 'eh?

Do we all know for sure that these NE2000 drivers will work at all? We should work on a positive identification of your NIC.

 

[Soccerman]

well I guess I could just try eh?

btw, you have that correct exactly.

and no, I don't know if those drivers work with it, however they were the best bet that I knew of.

have you ever heard of NE1000 drivers?

also, I REALLY CANNOT ID this card, all it has on it is the Manufacturer name (SMC). it's supposedly 10BaseT, it has an RJ45 port, and some sort of Parallel port like connector as well. it's fairly large (it doesn't go past the end of the ISA connector though).

otherwise the only numbers that appear to be possible model numbers are 3093, and 83C6 or something like that. the last one appears on 2 or more chips (or at least the first 3 digits, 83C), and the first one is on the back.

 

[Soccerman]

well I just tried looking on the website again for pictures of their legacy devices, and I managed to find one that looks pretty much exactly like mine, so I pointed Windows 98 to the drivers of that exact name, and the NIC works! The NE2000, and NE1000 drivers didn't work, but these ones do. thanks for the help guys! I learned a few things today!

 

[DoctorBooze]

Excellent, glad to hear it's working. I was going to suggest, use the IRQ 10 option, the card may not like sharing IRQ 3 with COM2. In fact, if it's from 1992, almost certainly not.

 

[stultus]

So tell us all, did it work plug-n-play or did you have to manually set it up once you found the right drivers?

 

[Soccerman]

well I have all my serial ports disabled (so that could be one reason why I didn't need to change that).

basically this is what I did. I set the first jumper to IRQ3, I/O 280, and RAM D0000, the second to none/soft.

then I went into the BIOS, and set it so that IRQ 3 is reserved for a Legacy ISA device, then went to Windows and installed the drivers that I thought would correspond to what this card needed (I looked at the PIC's in the Documentation of their Legacy devices in PDF format), and found that this one might be called SMC Ethercard PLUS Elite 16T (WD/8013W)

I wouldn't be surprised though, now that I have the drivers, if I didn't have to tell the BIOS and windows what IRQ, and what I/O it uses.. but I'll just leave it as it is!

btw, the reason I chose for the second jumper to be set as none/soft, is becuase in the PDF, the picture that looked identical to my card showed a chip with an arrow pointed to it saying ROM, and I looked at my card and found that there's no chip there (that jumper refers to the ROM btw).

 

[stultus]

Hmm, interesting. At least you've got it in the archives now.. Maybe it can help someone else.

Too bad you couldn't pin it all down at once. But I'm glad you found the working drivers.

 

[Budman]

Hey i told you the card worked.

Sorry i forgot to send you a floppy with the drivers.

 

[Soccerman]

heh it's alright, windows includes the drivers, all I needed was to know what it was called!