IJAH400@INDYVAX.IUPUI.EDU ("James A. Harvey") (02/15/90)
I have found a way to consistently reproduce the lock-up problem with the 3C503 packet driver on a NCS 286 PC (the same problem has also been seen on PS/2 model 30s with the same card, but I haven't checked this on one of those yet). This was done bringing the system up with a bare-bones AUTOEXEC.BAT. The symptoms are the same whether I setup the packet driver initialization with any of the hardware interrupts 2, 4 or 5 (ones that the 3COM diagnositics claim are free on the machine), and either of software interrupts 61 or 62 hex (I'm using software interrupt 62 hex now on the advice of a technical support person from FTP Software). The following sequence *always* causes the machine to lock up: 1. Do a cold boot. Note the time on the second hand on your watch when the PC finishes it's diagnostic tests (it beeps). 2. Install the packet driver using 3C503.COM. Don't run any network applications (TN3270 or TELBIN). Just install the driver. 3. The PC locks up exactly 60 seconds after the time noted in (1). After experiencing the problem at least once, a warm boot (Ctrl/Alt/Del) followed by driver installation seems to work (er, not work) similarly except that you get 60 seconds from the time of the driver installation rather than the boot. Not being a PC "systems" wizard, I don't know the significance of the magical 60 second mark on the 286... - James Harvey IUPUI Computing Services, DEC Systems Group Internet: ijah400@indyvax.iupui.edu BITNET:ijah400@indyvax Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are mine, not necessarily those of Indiana University
faatzd@turing.cs.rpi.edu (Don Faatz) (02/16/90)
I have also had this lock-up problem on 286 and 88 machines. I recently rebuilt the 3c503 driver from the .ASM sources. Now, if I install the driver from the command line AFTER autoexec has finished, the machine seems not to lock up. The driver I built using MASM 4.0 on the 8088 machine is 4108 bytes long, the driver I got from the distribution is 4106 bytes long. I know not what the difference is. Also note, I removed the .286 from defs.asm when rebuilding the driver - masm 4.0 didn't like it. If I try installing even my newly built 3c503 driver from the autoexec, it locks up the machine as described in previous posts. If you are having 3C503 problems, try rebuilding the driver locally - it helped me - but has not completely solved all my problems. < <Don Faatz, Rensselaer CSLab faatzd@cs.rpi.edu, Troy, NY <