Printable View
I have recieved from a friend 2 old ISA network cards and I noticed they both have dip switches. I asked a guy at the computer shop how to set them but I never got a clear answer. Could someone please tell me how it works? I know it has something to do with IRQ, am I right? I need to know which ones to set so I can put together a LAN in my room. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.
melakii
What are the model(s) of the cards? It might be IRQ, although it could be anything.
don't mind the dip switches, install the card first in your pc with its corresponding driver.
Yeah I think redthefed is right the dip switches set the irq. Although It might be easyer to get a pair of more modern network cards if your pc's have PCI slots, They are pretty cheap nowadays You can pick one up for £10 here which is about $13
Not only do the switches set the IRQ but also the address. You might still be able to find the docs online if the cards are brand name. But I think I agree with Cheesegoduk the new cards will be faster and cause much less pain in the future, especially if you have a newer box.
Wow, I don't miss those days at all. Seriously, you should listen to cheesegoduk and spend all of about 10 dollars and get a modern PnP network card, for several reasons, among which are that you have to manually set some of the parameters of the card on the card (I remember with the old 3coms you had to set the memory/IO range and the IRQ's on the card, and then setup the device the same way in your OS (boy that was fun to do in solaris x86 let me tell ya...), keeping in mind the whole time about not causing a conflict in assigned resources. Second of all the cards run on an ISA slot, which if I remember right is at most 33 Mhz (PCI is 66 Mhz and I think ISA was either half that or 15 Mhz...one of the two), either way, accessing that card through an ISA slot on your motherboard will be significantly slower than using a modern card. Not only that, but the processing power on the cards has improved as well as the oncard/onprocessor caching which would also have an effect on performance. Lastly, if memory serves, most of those ISA cards are so old that they use actual resistors/caps/diodes/etc on the board rather than manipulating silicon to perform the same function, and I would imagine if the cards already haven't reached the end of part life, they will be upon it soon (your card is due to fail)...
If you add up all the negatives versus plopping down 10 or 20 bucks for a new modern one, for me at least it would be an easy choice...
/nebulus
if your going to use the old cars to connect with dsl or cable their fine, more than likly they're 10Meg where broad band is what, 1.2
Broadband connections would most likely not be overly effected by the slower 10Mb card (DSL/cable/even T1 are all slower than 1.5M/s); however, what would be effected is if there is any kind of a local LAN. For example, I have a few computers and home and do share my DSL Internet connection quite effeciently, in which case having that slower card would effect my ability to move files around, share printers, etc. I realize that isn't that big of a deal, but if you look at what a newer network card costs versus the general price of things, you can get a new network card cheaper than you can take your girlfriend/wife to the movies/dinner for the evening (nice dinner, not Mickey D's...) (Even with McDonald's and move, that is still around 20 bucks, which is around what a new card costs, not alot of money). If the cost was say twice as much, I would probably say make due with what you have, but when it is that cheap to get something lots better...Still good points about their realistic/actual throughput to the internet tedob1...
/nebulus
Thank you guys for your help, I just wasn't real sure if they could be salvaged. People give me old computer parts all the time. I'm going out in a few to pick up a PCI network card and then I'll try my hand at networking.
melakii