terry@joshua.math.ucla.edu (06/10/91)
Hi, I am having trouble adding a station to a small Ethernet LAN. The network is running NetWare ELS II version 2.15c. There are 3 stations and one server, all on the same piece of thin Ethernet (UL CL2P). All stations and the server have a Western Digital WD8003E card. SHGEN (4.02) identifies the drivers provided with the cards as Western Digital Star/EtherCard 2.11.1. I want to add an original IBM PC as a new station. The PC has an MDA adapter, a floppy controller, and an AST Memo576 memory expansion card in it along with the network card. I have tried the following network cards in it: DLink DE-100, Suntek EL-100, WD 8003EB. The symptoms are thus: With no config.sys or autoexec.bat, I load IPX and NET4. I attach to the file server OK, and I can switch to F: and CD \LOGIN. I can list the files in the directory with DIR. However, as soon as I try to run LOGIN, the PC hangs for about 30 seconds, and then I get a message like "Error receiving from server BLAH, Network not responding, Abort, Retry?". If I Retry, I get the same error after another 30 seconds. I know the PC is working, since I tried one of the cards from another station in it and it works OK. I tried other network taps, and tried using the cards in other stations, with the same errors. When possible, I have used the configuration that works with the existing 8003E cards: int 3, I/O 300h, RAM at D000:0, no ROM. For the DLink and WD8003EB cards, I ran their test programs; they were able to "play catch" with each other across the net. I got the same error from a Novell NE/2 card in a PS/2 model 80 and a DLink DE-200 card in one of the working ATs. My guess is the cards are having trouble receiving multiple packets. That is, they can get a directory listing, since it is a short list and can fit in one packet, but when they are supposed to get several in a row, like LOGIN.COM, they miss the second one and time out. I am sure the cable distances are not over maximum. Can anyone help me with this? Have you seen this error before? Please respond by e-mail and I will post a summary. Thanks. Terry McKiernan Consultant at Large