BAD 3com 3c905b NICs. 28 so far!!!

[Gumbeauxkelly]

My company distributed 180 computers to a school district last school year. So far, since beginning of September, 28 have gone bad. No log-in, no green (link)light, no nothing. The only fix seems to be, replacement of card. With 180 computers?! Please let me know if there is any info out there that can help me. All computers are Win98 connecting with Novell Client 32 to a Novell 5.0 server.

 

[2ffat]

[tab]3Com NICs are usually pretty good. To have so many go bad may indicate another problem. Usually when a NIC goes bad around here, it is an indication of line trouble. For example, a electrical storm may take one or two out, a motherboard shorts out sending a higher than normal voltage through the UTP causing a cascade effect.

[tab]I would look for a common cause. Are these PC's connected together through the same hub, etc? Was there an electrical storm? Are the NICs from the same lot?



James P. Cottingham

http://www.ivcusa.com

All opinions are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

 

[bjcorne]

when i had trouble with a batch of 20 cards there was a recall of a bad batch. get the rev number and call the vendor. they sent me replacements right away.

 

[tschuy]

My experience has been the same as bjcorne. Seems the quality that 3com use to represent has really gone south.....and marketing is running the companies good name to the ground. Hell I'm getting better results these days with Netgear NIC's. Intel seems to be the way to go these days.

Cheers,

Tim

 

[Guest_imported]

3Com reputation in NIC is Best in world and problem with 20 batch of card can be explaine by Natural cause or electrical surge.

Ring Technical support for the explaination of the problem.

They usually have life time support for this NIC

 

[nelljack]

This is from my experience and I don't know your full setup but here goes.

I have a 1.6Ghz machine and on a wireless ISP. I was having a lot of trouble getting the connection to work. Finally, after two years of slow performance, then hdd crashing, I had new hdds put in and replaced the OS to 98SE. Then after that was two weeks of tweaking, using fixes, etc, and this is what I did.

If you are NOT using modems check the device mgr for "TCP/IP Adatper" in with the Network Adapters. If there is one there go into properties and disable it. I found my mobo just will not leave it out iwth either 3COM NIC (by the way mine worked fine before hdd crashed) or DataLink NIC. Once disabled the connection works like a charm.

I hope this helps. For other options read "XPH back to 98SE, now ethernet card won't work" in the forums.

Good luck.