ASUS A7V600 LAN acting oddly

  • Thread starter Thread starter FoolishGhoul
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FoolishGhoul

Hi all!

I have just built a system using an A7V600 motherboard (its getting on
a bit now I know but I got it off my brother so didn’t have to pay
much!) It has a really strange problem concerning the LAN port, in
that Windows doesn’t think it exists! The supplied driver files on
the CD seem to contain nothing more than a few .sys files and an .inf
file that doesn’t contain any data pertaining to a LAN card, which is
very frustrating. My brother said he had it up and running on a
network, but can’t remember how, any advice you can give would be much
appreciated. Just for reference the rest of my system is as follows:

Athlon XP 2500+
Radeon 9600 XT
Maxtor SATA 200gb
512mb Samsung ram

Everything else appears to be working fine (except the fact it
completely ignored my serial mouse and i’ve been forced to use a ps/2
one which has seen better days...)
 
FoolishGhoul said:
Hi all!

I have just built a system using an A7V600 motherboard (its
getting on a bit now I know but I got it off my brother so
didn't have to pay much!) It has a really strange problem
concerning the LAN port, in that Windows doesn't think it
exists! The supplied driver files on the CD seem to contain
nothing more than a few .sys files and an .inf file that
doesn't contain any data pertaining to a LAN card, which is
very frustrating. My brother said he had it up and running on
a network, but can't remember how, any advice you can give
would be much appreciated. Just for reference the rest of my
system is as follows:

Athlon XP 2500+
Radeon 9600 XT
Maxtor SATA 200gb
512mb Samsung ram

Everything else appears to be working fine (except the fact it
completely ignored my serial mouse and i've been forced to use
a ps/2 one which has seen better days...)
Click to expand...

oh, yeah and I tried downloading the files from ASUS but they appeared
to be the same ones that I had on the CD which appeared to be missing
something...or the wrong drivers...
 
FoolishGhoul said:
Hi all!

I have just built a system using an A7V600 motherboard (its getting on
a bit now I know but I got it off my brother so didn’t have to pay
much!) It has a really strange problem concerning the LAN port, in
that Windows doesn’t think it exists! The supplied driver files on
the CD seem to contain nothing more than a few .sys files and an .inf
file that doesn’t contain any data pertaining to a LAN card, which is
very frustrating. My brother said he had it up and running on a
network, but can’t remember how, any advice you can give would be much
appreciated. Just for reference the rest of my system is as follows:

Athlon XP 2500+
Radeon 9600 XT
Maxtor SATA 200gb
512mb Samsung ram

Everything else appears to be working fine (except the fact it
completely ignored my serial mouse and i’ve been forced to use a ps/2
one which has seen better days...)
Click to expand...

This is how I'd attack the problem.

First, go to Lavalys.com and download a free copy of
"Everest Home Edition". There is an option in there to
get a list of PCI devices. If a PCI device is not showing
up there, the device could be broken (defective) or a
disable bit somewhere has been set, there is a three pin
jumper block (to enable/disable the chip) and so on. If
the device cannot be seen, all the fancy driver installation
files in the world won't help. So, that is the first part of
your mission, is get the chip to be visible. In obscure cases,
it might require using the clear CMOS jumper (with the computer
unplugged from the wall), so that the BIOS will enable it
again. Try a Google search on "3C940" "disabled" for more
hints.

As for the 3C940, it has a storied past. The company names
associated with the chip are syskonnect.de (wrote drivers
for gigabit controllers, shipped PCI cards), marvell (fabless
chip maker, previous name Galileo Technology ?), and
3COM (commissioned a limited run of chips as 3C940).

For example, if I download a driver from here, and look at the
..inf file, I can see PCI\VEN_11AB&DEV_4320&SUBSYS_???????? .
11AB is the manufacturer code, 4320 the device code, and the
SUBSYS identifies the instance of the installation. If using
a driver like this doesn't work, it is possible that hacking
the .inf (fiddling the SUBSYS) could force it to install.
(I'm not recommending you do this, just establishing some
history for the chip.)

http://www.syskonnect.com/syskonnect/support/driver/d0102_driver.html

Other company names involved with the chip are Marvell and
3COM. It seems 3COM had exclusive access to the chip for a
period of time - Marvell may have bought the rights (or the
company, I don't know the history), and for a while, the only
way to get the chip, was as the 3C940. After maybe a year or
so, the chip also began shipping with a Marvell part number
on it (named Yukon?). Whether the PCI\VEN and DEV codes were
preserved or changed, I don't know. In any case, a lot of
fingers have been in the pie...

Now, rather than all that monkey business, it is very easy to
get a fat 9MB installer from Asus. You can go here, type in A7V600,
and get a driver:

http://support.asus.com.tw/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us
http://dlsvr01.asus.com/pub/ASUS/lan/3com/3c940/046_3c940.zip

But as I said earlier, if the chip does not appear on the PCI
bus, you'd just be wasting your time.

Paul
 
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