3Com

[commander]

I'm using 3Com 3C509 & 3C905B & C NIC's with the packet drivers & Ghost 5.0D. When I use the 3C509 ISA cards in any system, they work fine. When I have a system with a 3C509B or C PCI card in a PII or PIII system, it locks up. Try them in an MMX or older system & they work fine. I tried looking on the 3Com site for tech support or a contact e-mail, but couldn't find any. Anybody got any ideas?

[peter808]

Hey. I didn't have the exact problem yet but I had few similar ones... I learned that on a PII and PIII board (maybe any board) PCI slots have their own IRQ's. My problem was that there was always a conflict and the NIC wouldn't work no matter what drivers I had.
My quick solution:
Try disabling any devices that you have on board like sound, modem, even video if u have it built in.... put a PCI or ISA video card in there (or use the one built in) and start putting the NIC in every PCI slot one by one...it might work...one of them should work...usually PCI slots have IRQ 5,9,10,11...it all depends on the system.
It's possible that ISA have IRQ assigned too. I don't know I didn't check yet...
Try that and you might get lucky.

[commander]

Tried all PCI slots & the system still freezes when starting the packet driver. I should also mention both the PCI & ISA nic's work fine in NT & 95 on the PII & III systems. Anybody have an e-mail address for 3Com tech support?

[Sceat(UK)]

Sounds like a conflict somewhere. Have you upgraded all the graphic card drivers as ATi etc are renowned for having problems with 3com.
One of the weirdest experiences I had to solve was a patch lead that would only work with 3C 509b ISA cards!! Brought the whole LAN down when attached to 3C 900B Combo PCI card - Please give more detailed info if you want problem solving

[commander]

I've tried changing AGP video to PCI video with the same results. I should mention that this is being done under DOS(not a DOS window)with a bootable GHOST client disk & is connecting to a GHOST server across the network. The system freezes during driver initialization, before starting the GHOST client software.