Antisocial 9600

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aladds's picture
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Antisocial 9600

I found a 9600/350 at the roadside a few weeks ago. Didn't play with it much for a while as I found it on a damp day and wanted to let it dry out.
Once it was all dry, I had a look inside, cleaned up anything which wasn't so good (mainly dust) and set about having a look.

Needless to say the hard disks had nothing on them, clearly the previous owner had wiped all his data off. I respect his or her privacy, so that's fine with me. I have System disks anyway.

The thing had 2 HDs in it, a 4GB Apple and a 9.1GB Segate. Both work fine. I added another 9.1GB Segate, set up RAID with FWB's HD Toolkit and installed 9.1.

Everything seemed to go smoothly, until I tried using ethernet...

Firstly I noticed that it was only acquiring a self-assigned 169 address. I thought perhaps the router or cable was up the creek. I tried with another Mac, worked fine. Odd, methinks, gets a crossover cable, sets it up manually and I connect it to my MacBook. No dice. No pinging, nothing.

I've enabled "Advanced mode" in the TCP/IP control panel and unchecked "Load only when needed" in the Options box. Appletalk has been disabled and enabled for various tests.

This is when it gets weird.

I remembered I have an AAUI ethernet dongle box thing, so I plug that in, swapping the cable over. Same problem.

"This thing has 5 free PCI slots I think, I'll just slap in an ethernet card"

I grab an RTL 8139 card, wrestle with Google to get myself the drivers, install and reboot.

I fire up the TCP/IP control panel and there it is: "Ethernet Slot F2" (that's the bottom slot)
DHCP, Active, Save & close. Reopen and there is a 169 address staring me in the face.

Does this computer hate everyone else? Many PRAM resets, a couple of CUDA presses and nothing has helped. The clock battery is flat, but I doubt that's causing this!

Does anyone have any ideas?? Thanks in advance!

-aladds

aladds's picture
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Changing slot...

I slapped the card in the top slot (B1, second from top) and it makes no difference...

eeun's picture
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That's bizarre. I have had pr

That's bizarre. I have had problems in the past with the 604-based Macs and the internal ethernet port, but an additional card worked fine. I think that's how I ended up with a Realtek card.

Have you wiped the TCP/IP prefs, or more drastically, tried a second re-install of the OS? Tried upgrading to 9.2.2? Tried assigning TCP/IP IP manually + your gateway and DNS servers?

I recall reading somewhere of older Macs having problems getting DHCP from 10/100 routers, but again, I'd think that the Realtek card would have worked around that problem.

Never encountered this with the two 9600s I've owned. Nice salvage, by the way, despite the ethernet problem.

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Likely an interface problem

A few things to check:

1. Are you getting link on the Ethernet interface? If the jack on the computer doesn't indicate link status (e.g. there's no LED indicator), check on the other end (your router, switch, etc.).

2. If you're getting link, autonegotiation may be failing. If you can, set the port on your router/switch to either 10/half or 100/full, and then also set it the same on the Mac. Don't try an oddball combo like 10/full or 100/half.

aladds's picture
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As I say, manual config doesn

As I say, manual config doesn't seem to make a difference.

If I use the AAUI dongle or ethernet card then there are lights which come on and flash, but it still doesn't seem to work properly.

The switch doesn't have any settings I can adjust, but I can plug it directly into my router (The old Airport Extreme) and fiddle with ethernet settings on there.

One thing I have noticed while playing is that it thinks it's connected even when it's not. I.E. Appletalk will switch to Ethernet without a cable plugged in, my previous experience has always been that it complains if you try to do that... It also gets a self-assigned DHCP IP even if it's not plugged in.

aladds's picture
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Progress!

I've managed to get the PCI card to work with AppleTalk. I seem to remember having a problem with TCP/IP and realtek cards before... How frustrating...

I'm using the driver version 3.00, which is apparently for OS 9.x. Does anyone know otherwise?

aladds's picture
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And now it works...

I left the TCP/IP control panel up whilst I was browsing to see if I could find anyone else with the same problem.

I glanced over and noticed it had gotten itself an IP from the router.
I set the time over the internet to check, surely enough it works!

How strange!

A reboot later and It's still working.

I would like to know what's wrong with the internal, but as the card is 10/100 I think I'll just use that for now!

Thanks y'all!

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