Comments on: NT TCP/IP failure

By: joelsplace

joelsplace — Sat, 18 Jun 2005 21:37:33 +0000

Anyone know how to make a Xircom NIC work in NT or where I can get updated PCMCIA drivers? Thanks, Joel

By: joelsplace

joelsplace — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 10:05:59 +0000

I don’t have a floppy drive and it won’t boot from USB. There isn’t a new driver available from Compaq for the PCMCIA but if you know of somewhere else to get a better driver that would be great info. Thanks, Joel

By: poppaman2

poppaman2 — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 08:05:14 +0000

Regarding flashing the BIOS – I am aware that the ROMPaq is floppy based… There is a “dual bay” on the fromt panel/right side of your notebook which can hold either a second battery or a floppy drive. Do you have the floppy drive for the bay? It can also be connected externally, to the parallel port…

Also – the BIOS of the machine may support booting from a “legacy USB” device – check and see if legacy USB support can be enabled, but I believe the machine may pre-date this now copmmon feature.

See if there is a new driver for the PCMCIA/PC Card chipset, as that may possibly be the root cause of the problem (unlikely, but a possibility…)

By: joelsplace

joelsplace — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 13:01:48 +0000

I’ve tried the latest driver and yes, if I assign an address it can ping it’s own address. You’re right about the modem, it isn’t installed correctly. Any ideas on how to get the modem working? I removed it and reinstalled it with the modem icon in the control panel with no luck. Thanks, Joel

By: boardinhank

boardinhank — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 12:38:48 +0000

What OS is the laptop? if you statically assign an address and cannot ping that statically assigned address you gotta find a different driver. The tcp/ip stack isnt functioning correctly if you cannot ping its address or the loopback address… Working with nt4 is another tough one. That card may have issues with that OS. I have trouble with those Xircom cards often, always is the getting the right driver and it installed correctly, because it should install the modem, and the network card individually. and in NT4 you proboly had to try the hardware wizard and point to the driver. blah blah blah. Remove all components and get a new driver.

By: joelsplace

joelsplace — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 09:37:03 +0000

Yes the cable and port work fine. I used the same card/cable/port with a different laptop and it worked fine.
I would reflash the BIOS but I can’t or haven’t because the BIOS update for this machine is floppy based and the machine is NTFS and doesn’t have a floppy or CD drive.
Thanks for the suggestions and keep ideas coming. Joel

By: poppaman2

poppaman2 — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 08:41:57 +0000

Not sure whether this applies to any Compaq machines, but I know this works with Dell Latitudes experiencing similar issues (Dell Latitude CPiA, CPx C400, LS400; Xircom 10/100, 3COM 10/100, MegaHertz 10-Base-T (X-Jack)):

Update, or reapply the current BIOS…

The issue I encountered was that certain notebooks would, for no apparent reason loose their networking ability. Similar to your situation, a PC-Card SCSI adapter would work, and any of the cards would work in another notebook. Upgrading to the most current BIOS revision, or simply re-flashing to the current revision addressed the issue 100% of the time, except for one case where the PC Card controller ended up failing shortly after the networking issue appeared…