Network installations can be fun, but often they are
painful:
The "@#$##!!#@"(censored) Network does NOT work
!
In such cases, it is always advisable to run a diagnostics on the
Network cards, especially if you got the cards as used equipment.
And I can
tell you from my experience: network card are
sensitive !
For example: watch out in office
environments with carpets, walking on some carpet can create static electricity,
which discharges as small sparks, when you touch a door. Such discharges can
damage the electronics on a network card.
How
to run diagnostics:
A NIC (Network Interface
Card) is usually delivered with a Setup/Driver floppy disk:
Look for
EXE-files: SETUP.EXE, SOFTSET.EXE or (like above): PCIDIAG.EXE. Most of
these SETUP-programs have also a diagnostics build-in.
Note:
all these setup/diagnostic programs are
DOS-programs.
Most of them will NOT work
properly inside a Windows95/98 "MS-DOS Prompt" Window, you need to select
"Shutdown":
to "restart the computer in MS-DOS mode" (or reboot to the MS-DOS mode).
On a
Windows NT system, you will require a DOS-BOOT floppy to reboot the system from
floppy with DOS, then to run the setup/diagnostic program (because these programs need to address directly (via i/o-addressing)
the network card, but this is allowed by Windows NT as a security violation:
only the NT operating system via its device drivers is allowed to communicate
directly with hardware devices).
Example: 3COM EtherLink III 3C509B:
3C5X9CFG.EXE
Search the
menu for : "Test" or
"Diagnostics", select it:
Run the
tests, if any of them fails, you network board maybe bad and should be
replaced.
Example: RealTek 8029:
RSET8029..EXE
This program
allows to run a diagnostics only on the board, just testing the electronics for
proper reply:
But there is
on this diagnostic program also the possibility to make a test-transmission
between 2 boards over the network:
But for
that, you need 2 Systems with the SAME network card, so that one can be defined
as the Initiator (creating a signal, sending it out onto the network) and one as
the Responder (listening to the network for an incoming test
signal).