Sunday, 16 July 2000
Finally got windows installed and discovered an interesting little problem.
My Bay Netgear FA310 NIC won't work properly on an 83MHz bus in Windows. That is win98 or win2k. Under both it APPEARS to work fine, sends packets when you'd expect it to send packets but gets no reply. Dump it down to 66MHZ and it works fine. Well, I've not tested that under win2k as I deleted it when the NIC wasn't working... Now, I KNOW this card MUST work at 75 and 100 as I used to reun it fine at 75 and my mate has the same card and has a PII 450. I'm stumped. Also it works fine in Linux at 83, which is why it's taken me so long (probly approaching a month) to work out what was wrong.
I came up with an ingenious idea today (yesterday) as I left the house... My Dad doesn't want my computer on all the time, but I like to go away to a mates house (for example) and log back on remotely to read my mail and stuff (I'm writing this on my computer whilst at a mates house). Now, so I don't have to leave it on I could get a wake-on-LAN capable NIC and when I want to log on just wake the computer up and log in. This seems like an ideal solution (and it's damn cool too ;) so I've done some investigation into wake-on-LAN cards and have discovered Bay Netgear sell one. I'd recomend Bay Netgear to anyone, we've found their cards to be reliable and fast. Only this recent problem with windows and the 83 MHz bus has cast any doubt on them, anbd that CAN'T be a hardware problem as it's fine in Linux.
Anyway, this card is only US$32 (the FA310 is $27), but it appears nobody sells it in the UK and bay don't ship to the UK. *sigh* I may prod Dabs and see if they'd order them in as they seem to sell every other Netgear card.
The only other thing I'm not sure about this card is it says:
"No power cable is needed for installation to PCs with PCI revision 2.2."
I don't have the foggiest idea whether my Mobo is PCI revision 2.2, anyone know? It's an Abit BP6...
Having peered at the picture on the netgear site I don't think my PC DOES have PCI 2.2 cos the card seems to have an extra bit on the PCI slot bit... The card also seems to have only one connector on it, so I've no idea what you do if you don't have PCI 2.2...
Anyway, enough crap about my LAN-life, in RL nothing at ALL has happened. That's why I've not updated this for AGES.
Bought a Toy Dolls album. They rock. I think I'll have to add them to my "Good Stuff" page.
My parents and brother are away in Italy visiting a guy my brother met on the Internet. This Italian guy (Georgio) is a train enthusiast and was looking for a british person to correspond with, so he was pointed to my brother and since then they became good friends and even got my Dad involved. They met him last year when they went to Switzerland and he invited them to go and stay with him and his family (he's a grandfather) at their holiday home in the north of Italy. So they're away there and are coming back sometime today (sunday) or VERY early Monday morning.
Word of the day: shout