NE1000 and Novell ipxodi


PROBLEM - Greenock field support reported that they could not load NE1000's and Novell IPXODI, NEXT drivers in a Valuepoint 6381 (Acorn 25 MHz 486SX). The problem appears to be slot sensitive with the top slot being the worst case.

Machines AFFECTED - Valuepoint 6381/Si 486 25SX, the DX model was not tested, but should have the same problem.

SOLUTION - Boca raton:

5 NE1000 cards were tested in the lab using Novell IPXODI, NEXT drivers. The cards were tested in multiple 6381/Si 425SX systems and no problems were seen, even with the card in the top slot. a proven failing system was sent from Greenock (the failing card not included), the five cards were tested and no problems were found.

Greenock:

Testing of a new NE1000 adapter in a VP/Si Nuts system was completed greenock. A big improvement in performance was found but intermittent problems still exist when the card is placed in the upper slots.

Slot 1 (bottom): No errors seen

Slot 2 (middle): Very rare errors seen (approximately 1 in 20) when connecting to the Novell server, error is "could not connect to server".

Slot 3 (top): NE1000 fails approximately 1 in 5 times when connecting to server.

This is an improvement over the old NE1000 card, where the card failed approximately 1 in 4 times, and failed in slot 3 most of the time.

As a result of these tests and similar tests in boca, the following are recommendations for customers attempting to run NE1000 cards in Nuts acorn systems:

1. Use NE1000 card in slot closest to the planar.

2. Use the latest drivers from Novell-use the NE1000.COM driver provided by Novell, and not the older IPX.COM driver that is generated by the wsgen program from Novell. This will also require the latest LSL.COM, IPXODI.COM, and NETX.EXE files, and will require the user to generate a NET.CFG file as described in the Novell netware documentation.

3. Replace the NE1000 card with a newer one from Eagle technology older cards suffer from more problems on Nuts.

Temporary work around - move the NE1000 card to the bottom slot on the riser board.

Permanent fix - IBM has not tested the NE1000 adapter in any VP systems and for this reason does not recommend the use of this card in VP systems. IBM however, fully tested the NE2000 adapter card and supports the usage of this adapter in VP systems. For those customers that must use the NE1000 adapter, the above recommendations should be followed-but there are no guarantees that the adapter will operate error free.

Back to  Jump to TOP-of-PAGE

Please see the LEGAL  -  Trademark notice.
Feel free - send a Email-NOTE  for any BUG on this page found - Thank you.