[comp.dcom.lans] 3C501 and old PC's

rocks@nmsu.edu (Dave Rocks) (09/04/90)

	Has anyone had problems running 3+Open on OLD IBM PC's(not XT's)
	using 3C501 cards. We get strange and misleading data error messages
	trying to load from floppies and then a "error trying to spawn
	redir" message. The same diskettes will boot from Zenith XT clones
	or PS/2'-286's using 3C501 cards. The software will work correctly
	in the old PC's if we use a 3C503 instead. It may not be a 3+Open
	problem, rather a IBM/PC(circa 1983)-3C501 problem and may have
	shown up under other NOS's. We have 55 such machines, so it would be
	no small expense to replace the 3C501 cards. If anyone has come
	across similar errors, no matter what the operating environment, I
	would like to hear about it.

					Thanx
					Dave Rocks
					New Mexico State University
					rocks@nmsu.edu

jackw@pa.reuter.COM (Jack Wilkinson) (09/04/90)

In <122@opus.NMSU.Edu> rocks@nmsu.edu (Dave Rocks) writes:


>	Has anyone had problems running 3+Open on OLD IBM PC's(not XT's)
>	using 3C501 cards. We get strange and misleading data error messages
>	trying to load from floppies and then a "error trying to spawn
>	redir" message. The same diskettes will boot from Zenith XT clones
>	or PS/2'-286's using 3C501 cards. The software will work correctly
>	in the old PC's if we use a 3C503 instead. It may not be a 3+Open
>	problem, rather a IBM/PC(circa 1983)-3C501 problem and may have
>	shown up under other NOS's. We have 55 such machines, so it would be
>	no small expense to replace the 3C501 cards. If anyone has come
>	across similar errors, no matter what the operating environment, I
>	would like to hear about it.

>					Thanx
>					Dave Rocks
>					New Mexico State University
>					rocks@nmsu.edu

I know that we simply gave up on having 3c501's here.

(We had three and here's what went on...)

1)  The PC that it lived in got upgraded to a 25mhz 386 and it
no longer talked to either our Novell network nor to any of the
Unix systems via TCP/IP and the ftp software PC/TCP product.

2)  Don't know what happened to this one, what it sent to the host 
was good "clean" data, but what it passed back to the PC was garbage.

3)  Died.  Dead.  One afternoon it worked and the next morning it
didn't.  The PC/TCP drivers couldn't find it.  So, away it went.

I can get replacement cards cheap, but I'm switching us over to 
Racal-Interlan NI5210 for 8-bit machines and Tiara LanCard/E*AT
for the 16-bit power beasts.

I think that it's time to put our 3c501s to bed and let them rest.

Peace....

Jack E. Wilkinson   - Systems Administrator
jackw@pa.reuter.com - ...!{uunet|decwrl|sun|hoptoad}!saxony!jackw
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