OS/2 Warp4 3Com: 3C905 notes

These are notes I made regarding installing a 3C905 series NIC in a W4 environment. Feel free to send me comments on my choices or omissions.

This is very much unfinished.

Notes on dual-NIC installation of the PCI 3C905x. Setting the Network Adapter Address (Media Access Control address, "MAC"), the PCI slot and bus number are not necessary for a single-NIC installation, but is necessary for a dual-NIC installation.

Ascertain & write down the PCI slot number, bus number, and MAC address for each NIC, using the 3Com configuration utility 3C90XCFG.exe . This can be found on diskette two. Run that file, it's a DOS LHA archive, agree to the terms by pressing "Y", then it will extract a bunch of stuff, including the latest OS2 driver (in \NDIS2\OS2), dated November of '99 (v5.2.2).

Boot to real DOS, run 3C90XCFG.exe, and the first screen will be as below. The example is from a box with only one NIC installed; in a dual-NIC installation there will be two NIC sections.

Then boot OS/2 and run MPTS.exe, choose "Configure", "Configure", then select the first NIC from the "Current Configuration" pane:

MPTS, showing the NIC->Edit dialogue for the later 3C905x-series driver (v5.2.2 shown).

. . . and update those last three fields, using the data gathered earlier.
MPTS: 3C905 driver Edit screen, after

Repeat for the second NIC, then close MPTS and inspect x:\IBMCOM\PROTOCOL.ini . Here's the relevant section:

   [EL90XIO2_nif]

      DriverName = EL90X$
      MaxTransmits = 40
      NetAddress = "00105A1C83A8"
      Slot = 9
      BusNo = 0

There will be two NIC sections like above, at the end of the file.

Reboot.

Revision History:
30Apr2013
Fixed up HTML to validate properly; no content change.
05-Apr-01
Initial release.

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Last updated 30Apr2013