Force NIC to 100 Mbps

Force NIC to 100 Mbps
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Subject Author Date
Force NIC to 100 Mbps Tomás Ó hÉilidhe 12-19-2007
`--> Re: Force NIC to 100 Mbps Tomás Ó hÉilidh ..12-19-2007
Posted by Tomás Ó hÉilidhe on December 19, 2007, 7:31 pm
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I have a desktop computer that's a few years old, I ressurected it just
there a few days ago. The NIC in it is the "3Com EtherLink III ISAPNP",
also known as the 3Com 3c509b, which is about a decade old at this stage.

The card is capable of both 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps. The card was designed
in the period when 100 Mbps was being phased in and so while it *can* work
at 100 Mbps, it defaults to 10 Mbps when it checks the line (irrespective
of whether other hosts on the collision domain are working at 100 Mbps).

I have a boot disk for the card which lets me set its settings (e.g. I
can set it to work in Full Duplex), but it doesn't let me choose whether to
use 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps.

Does anyone know of a way of forcing a NIC to 100 Mbps? Or does anyone
have experience with this particular card and know a way of getting it to
work at 100 Mbps? I'm working with Windows XP Pro SP2.

Thanks for reading

--
Tomás Ó hÉilidhe

Pure Networks
Posted by jpd on December 19, 2007, 8:38 pm
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> I have a desktop computer that's a few years old, I ressurected it just
> there a few days ago. The NIC in it is the "3Com EtherLink III ISAPNP",
> also known as the 3Com 3c509b, which is about a decade old at this stage.
>
> The card is capable of both 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps.

Is it? The 3c515 is, but the 3c509 and 3c509B are not. The 3c905 of
course is, but that is a PCI card. Mind that you will have a hard time
getting any serious throughput on an ISA bus, so there is not much point
in trying to force the issue.

http://support.3com.com/infodeli/tools/nic/etherlink.htm
http://support.3com.com/infodeli/tools/nic/3c509b/docs/ugb/ch1.htm#14246
http://support.3com.com/infodeli/tools/nic/3c515/docs/ug/ch1.htm#1281


--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law.

Posted by Tomás Ó hÉilidhe on December 19, 2007, 10:22 pm
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comp.dcom.lans.ethernet:

>> The card is capable of both 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps.
>
> Is it? The 3c515 is, but the 3c509 and 3c509B are not.


Wups I must have gotten it wrong... I was almost certain I saw "10/100"
written somewhere.

I was looking at NIC's on eBay just there and it seems you can get a 100
Mbps card for less than $5 :-O

I also see that there's these little USB connectors that are basically a
really really small NIC:

http://cgi.ebay.ie/USB-TO-LAN-RJ45-ETHERNET-10-100-Mbps-NETWORK-
ADAPTER_W0QQitemZ180197017838QQihZ008QQcategoryZ67870QQssPageNameZWDVWQQr
dZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Are these any use? I have USB 2.0 slots in my PC but they're on a card
that connects via PCI... so I'd probably be better off cutting out the
middle-man and getting a NIC that connects directly to PCI? Then again it
would be hand having a tiny little NIC I can carry around and stick into
computers via USB :-D

What brand should I look for on eBay when buying a PCI NIC? There's a few
Realtek cards for less than $5. I've a gigabit Realtek NIC in my laptop
and I've had no trouble with it. (But then again I've never gotten a
chance to use it at 1 gig ha). Should I go with Realtek? Or is there a
PCI 100 Mbps NIC out there that's head and shoulders above the rest? (and
which I can still get for about $5 on eBay :-D).

The main throughput I'll need will be for Samba file-sharing, basically
copying a few gigabytes to the desktop machine when I'm backing stuff up.
Do you think a 100 Mbps PCI would be a vast improvement over the 10 Mbps
ISA, or are there other bottlenecks which decrease the difference? The
machine with the Samba share is a Pentium III 500 MHz with a pretty fast
hard disk.

And last but not least, would it be pointless to connect a gigabit NIC
into a PCI slot?

Thanks for your help jpd, and thanks for those links too.

--
Tomás Ó hÉilidhe

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