[ale] Time to go ISA NIC Hunting

[Geoffrey]

BruceG wrote:
> Decided to put together an old box to work as a print server.
<snip>
> 
> Can't ping the gateway. Can't ping any other boxes. Can ping my
> loopback address and my ethernet address. Can't ping it from other
> hosts. So - checked the mac address of the nic and looked it up. It's
> an Accton. Don't know the model.

I had no idea you could do that, where did you look it up?

> 
> I DO know that it is not ISAPnP. Did a pnpdump, and got no hits. Did
> /cat/proc pci - no good. So it's an ISA card, not PCI. And NOT plug
> and pray. Doing a cat /proc/interrupts shows it using IRQ 10 with no
> conflicts. lsmod shows the card as well.

Check the cable?  Could be the card is just bad.  I've got one box that 
has an integrated card.  Seems every OS I put on it, sees it, but it 
just doesnt' work.  I've given it up for bad.

> Anyone know anyplace to get a CHEAP ISA Ethernet card? I'd like to
> put together a print server, and move the shared printer off my
> desktop.

You'll likely need to head to a used shop, as I've not seen any for sale 
in a while.  Does it have to be 100 or is 10 sufficient?  The reason I 
ask is, I've got a handful of isa nics I'd let you have one if you'd 
like.  I'd give you 4-5 as I've not tested them and you can keep a 
couple if you can get them to work.  Let me know if you're interested.

I know that in the past, I've seen some ISA cards that could only be 
configured by a dos program.  Point is, if the card is configured for 
one irq and you try using a different one, it's not going to work.

-- 
Until later, Geoffrey	esoteric at 3times25.net

Building secure systems inspite of Microsoft