David S. Cargo wrote:

> Are there some NICs that work better than others?  I have 3Com
> 3c509b cards and have had no luck getting two of them working on
> the same system.  I've got a Pentium 75 system (surplus from
> Material Processing for which I paid $50) that I want to use
> for my firewall box, but I have been putting off wrestling with
> the issue until I get a DSL line (maybe sometime this month).
> 
> dsc

 Actually, the 3c509 works *great*...if you can get it set up right.  If
you go to 3com's web site and download the driver disks (actually you only
really need disk #2), extract 3c5x9cfg.exe, put it on a DOS bootable
floppy (ugh, but it works) and boot onto it, you can change the
configuration on one of the cards so that they aren't using the same I/O
address & interrupt.  I've got a pair of these in my firewall, and they
work great.
 The self-extracting archive for EtherDisk #2 (as it's called) is
available at:

ftp://ftp.3com.com/pub/nic/3c509/3c509x2.exe

or

http://support.3com.com/infodeli/tools/nic/3c509/3c509x2.exe


 Hope this helps.

     Jima