>>>>> "DD" == David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b at dd-b.net> writes: DD> Jima <jima at gimp.damnation.net> writes: >> 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. DD> This is so strange. I've dropped 3c509 cards surplus from DD> dead work into two boxes, and they auto-configured and were DD> recognized and work fine, without any of this horsing around. DD> Am I just very lucky, or what? Well, I got two NICs surplus from my employers and I suspect that our IS folks tried to configure them identically to the maximum extent possible, because both NICs shared IRQ AND address. So I needed the driver to fix the collision. Once that was done, there was nothing more to do. They autoconfigured from there. So I think I was especially UNlucky, but even so, it was pretty darn easy. R