I hope I'm not telling you something you already know, but
I'll not know that until I do, will I?
I tried to use an SMC8216 (I think?) 10/100 FastEthernet
ISA card. The first point to note is that XP must have
32bit drivers, there is no provision for 16bit coded
drivers (only an emulator to run legacy 16bit
applications - which is of course on a higher "layer"
or "shell" than your device drivers, hence inaccessible
for that purpose)
If that's not the issue, then I also found (can't quote
the source I'm afraid) that the XP compatibility check
will always reject any driver which is for a non-plug-n-
play device. This is justified simply by the fact that
Microsoft refuse to support any such "ancient" hardware
due to the "never 100% conformance of older devices to the
acknowledged industry standards". I can understand their
argument, and it's a valid reason why they do not wish to
get involved with obsolete issues - HOWEVER, we don't all
have the relatively speaking, disposable income of your
average American user, and so we might want to choose to
use non-PnP hardware, knowing that we would therefore
invalidate our support rights. Some people may do this
just for fun, to take a trip down memory-lane, or just for
the sheer challenge, whatever. The point is that we should
be acknowledged as having brains and wisdom, I might even
dare to say that there's the odd user out in the www who
could possibly now more about the technical issues than
the "support staff" of our beloved superiors - MS! My
point being that there are points of view and ways of
thinking 'outside' of The Corporation, so their valid
business decision to not support, ISN'T NECCESSARILY valid
for me and my situation. Why not simply say that "You do
this at you own risk and if you press OK you've
invalidated your support contract, are you sure you wish
to continue..."
Whereby we are empowered with the choice, rather than
being treated like technophobic idiots, in the usual
condescending way)
Right, that's of my chest. In conclusion, in my case I
found a NE2000 .inf modification which "tricked" XP into
thinking it was PnP, by simply telling it that it was! A
crafty trick if you can source a similar solution. This
got it working at 10Mbps using the RJ45 connector. But to
configure the cared to run at 100Mbps I needed a set-
up .exe tat SMC no longer provide, but retain the
copyright, making it illegal for anyone with a copy from
helping you!! So I ditched it anyway, after all that
research/effort!
That may be of use to you, but if not, sorry to be
patronising, but at least on a personal level I've had my
daily gripe at that hand that both feeds and frustrates.
E ;-)
