Re: pcmcia install on IBM laptop
Kevin Coyner said:
> I'm trying to figure out what the line about autonegotiation failed
> means, and whether that will point me towards my problem.
While in my experience it is EXTREMELY rare for autonegotiation
to fail it can happen if the 2 network devices are not compadible.
I experienced an extreme example of this a few years ago using
a cheap shit linksys 5 port 10/100 switch and a 3com NIC. No matter
what I did the 3com and the linksys would not talk to each other
or when they did the transfer rates were REALLY slow(for ftp 8-10kB/s),
I called 3com they blamed linksys's NWAY, I called linksys they
blamed 3com(what I would do for a phone with conference abilities
at the time!). In the end I traded the linksys switch for a stick of
ram or something and bought a netgear, same NICs, same cables and
performance screamed. The linksys switch had no problems with my
realtek 8139 and intel eepro cards(could sustain 8-10MByte/s on
ftps).
I have also read reports on some intel cards failing autonegotiation
on HP Procurve switches(maybe only the older models).
10mbps is the most many laptops can handle anyways, their disks
are really slow and PCMCIA itself doesn't offer a very fast bus
for operation. for normal day to day operation I can't tell the
difference between 10mbps and 100mbps on my laptop(p3-700 256MB),
infact I use my 10mbps pcmcia NIC more because I like the dongle
more(less snag-prone).
what kind of switch or hub do you have? I really can't reccomend
netgear enough for low end operations I've had nothing but
good luck with them so far. of course my home network runs off a
Extreme networks summit 48, a nice big noisy switch..but I run a
network cable to my bedroom which uplinks to a 5-port netgear..
Some network drivers(not sure about pcmcia) allow you to force
the network config(half/full duplex 10/100mbps) but generally
this isn't reccomended as it can cause more problems then it's
worth. If you want to try this I would reccomend to try posting
in the pcmcia forums here:
http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=2405
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