>>>>> "DD" == David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b at dd-b.net> writes:

    DD> Jima <jima at gimp.damnation.net> writes:
    >> David S. Cargo wrote:
    >> 
    >> > Are there some NICs that work better than others?  I have
    >> 3Com > 3c509b cards and have had no luck getting two of them
    >> working on > the same system.  I've got a Pentium 75 system
    >> (surplus from > Material Processing for which I paid $50) that
    >> I want to use > for my firewall box, but I have been putting
    >> off wrestling with > the issue until I get a DSL line (maybe
    >> sometime this month).  > > dsc
    >> 
    >> Actually, the 3c509 works *great*...if you can get it set up
    >> right.  If you go to 3com's web site and download the driver
    >> disks (actually you only really need disk #2), extract
    >> 3c5x9cfg.exe, put it on a DOS bootable floppy (ugh, but it
    >> works) and boot onto it, you can change the configuration on
    >> one of the cards so that they aren't using the same I/O address
    >> & interrupt.  I've got a pair of these in my firewall, and they
    >> work great.

    DD> This is so strange.  I've dropped 3c509 cards surplus from
    DD> dead work into two boxes, and they auto-configured and were
    DD> recognized and work fine, without any of this horsing around.
    DD> Am I just very lucky, or what?

Well, I got two NICs surplus from my employers and I suspect that our
IS folks tried to configure them identically to the maximum extent
possible, because both NICs shared IRQ AND address.  So I needed the
driver to fix the collision.

Once that was done, there was nothing more to do.  They autoconfigured
from there.

So I think I was especially UNlucky, but even so, it was pretty darn
easy.

R