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Problem with WD8003W and a PC XT

P

per

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Some time ago I got this WD8003W ethernet card and I thought it would work in my XT, but I'm facing problems with just that.

The card has an 8-bit ISA connector, and there shoudn't really be any problems since this card is designed for PC's and XT's IIRC. The card does work in my 486.

So to the actual problem. There are two packet-drivers I can choose from, as of I know. One supplied by Crynwr, and another supplied by SMC (it's based on the one from Crynwr anyways). There is what's happening when running the drivers:
Code: 
SMC_WD 0x60
"Error: The memory at this address does not belong to WD/SMC/IBM".
Code: 
PKT8000 0x60
My XT locks up.

Somehow, I got the SMC_WD driver to work ONCE, but I haven't been able to repeat that.

It's using SRAM, so it shouldn't be any problem with memory refresh. I have made sure no other card is conflicting, however, it might be because I run the driver off a floppy drive.

Anybody else got experiences with this card (or similars)?
 
Last edited:
Maybe put the rest of the switch values on end?

smc_wd 0x60 -o 3 0x280 0xd000

or


smc_wd 0x60 0x03 0x280 0xD000
 
chuckcmagee said:
Maybe put the rest of the switch values on end?

smc_wd 0x60 -o 3 0x280 0xd000

or


smc_wd 0x60 0x03 0x280 0xD000
Click to expand...

Tried that too... Still the same ressult.

When my computer locks up on the newest one, the driver has started executing, but the Floppy drive still runs. Often the motor in the floppy drive keep spinning and nothing happens after the crash (Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work either).
 
When a bug causes the computer to start executing data as if it was instructions, you will get strange stuff (going wild or totally dead lockup, have to power off). As to what causes the program to do this in your case, I am clueless. Resource conflict?
 
chuckcmagee said:
When a bug causes the computer to start executing data as if it was instructions, you will get strange stuff (going wild or totally dead lockup, have to power off). As to what causes the program to do this in your case, I am clueless. Resource conflict?
Click to expand...

Maybe the DMA controller confuses transfers from/to the card with the ones from/to the floppy drive, or is it just such delays that the stack overflows?
 
Any luck getting this to work?

I have the same NIC and I was thinking about putting it into my 5160.
 
lutiana said:
Any luck getting this to work?

I have the same NIC and I was thinking about putting it into my 5160.
Click to expand...

I didn't get it to work in my XT, however, it works in my 486 (as I problably states avobe).

If it is a problem with my system or not is difficult to say for me, and I suggest you should try to make it work to see if it is just my card/system or if it is general incompability.
 
Pick a different memory address for the WD card.

I use this card on a PCjr - it is very compatible! If there is something else at that address the card will be confused.

The IO ports have to be specified exactly, but the memory can be moved around using the command line parameter. Use debug to test and make sure that there is no pre-existing memory where you are telling the card to map its memory.
 
chuckcmagee said:
Maybe put the rest of the switch values on end?

smc_wd 0x60 -o 3 0x280 0xd000

or


smc_wd 0x60 0x03 0x280 0xD000
Click to expand...

Just wanted to put this really specific information here for reference purposes:

This loads the packet driver and gives me a working ethernet address for a WESTERN DIGITAL WD8003E:


C>smc_wd 0x60 0x4 0x340



On the card itself, for the 0x340 I/O ADDRESS on jumpers W1/B thru W1/E are set for 340h, i.e., Closed-Open-Closed-Open. And the 0x4 is for INTERRUPT SELECT on jumpers W2 for IRQ4, i.e., Open-Open-Open-Closed-Open-Open.


Stason.org has complete jumper information and has it listed as the WESTERN DIGITAL CORPORATION ETHERCARD PLUS:
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/network...L-CORPORATION-Ethernet-ETHERCARD-PLU-211.html


Packet driver software interrupt is 0x60.

Memory address automatically gets loaded to d-thousand on my machine, i.e., 0xD000 :D
 
I know that this is a really old thread but I have a similar problem.

I have a IBM 5155 Portable PC (which is essentially a XT) and I try to attach a WD8003E card using the packet drivers at crynwr.com but it just hangs the machine.

When I try the same driver on a Pentium 166 with ISA slots it immediately returns that it initialized the card.

I have tried just about every IRQ and IO address setting with the same result. Is this board just not XT compatible?
 
Nope. I have tried slot 4 and 5 without any success.

BTW. It is not related to the version of DOS since I tried PC-DOS 2.1 on both the XT and the P166/MMX machine. The P166 initializes fine. Not the XT.

I will now try some older packet drivers like WD8003.COM and SMC_WD.COM if that makes any difference.

I have only two other 8 bit NICs. One Excelan EXOS 205 and one Univation Lifelink 82586 board. The Excelan board has a packet driver but I have no idea if there is a packet driver for the Univation board. Unfortunately all these are longer boards and are hard to cram into a IBM 5155.
 
I am in the process in borrowing a V20 locally. Buying one from China is cheap but it would take so long time to arrive. Anyhow I tested with older packet drivers, like wd8003e.com and smc_wd.com and they actually work just fine so it might well be something with the newer pkt8000.com that it needs at least an AT-class machine.

9GrnUZqm.jpg

PSEWBHxm.jpg
 
I have this very card running in a 5160 XT using the Crynwr driver. I don't remember the specifics settings I used, but I have three of these WD nics and they are all installed in PCs. A 5150, a XT clone, and a 5160, and a standard setup worked on all of them except for relocating the memory address because of a sound card conflict on one of the machines.
 
Interesting. So you are using the PKT8000 packet driver successfully? And this is with a standard 8088 and not a V20 CPU?

My NIC is a WD80003E which as far as I understand is fixed at memory address 0xD000. I used I/O address 0x300 and IRQ 2.

My board looks like this (image from Internet):

WD8003E-BNC-ISA-NIC_thumb.jpg


I can only make it work with the older packet drivers (Clarkson early Russell Nelson) WD8003E and SMC_WD.
 
I am using the SMC_WD.COM packet driver, which I got from the Crynwr collection. I just now set it up on the 5160 motherboard that I use for testing. 256K with floppy controller with one drive connected, VGA card, Plus Hardcard.

SMC_WD 0X60 0X03 0X280 (I have never specified an address for card ram)

I have never used this kind of setup for anything except FTP, so I can transfer files from my main system, but that works perfectly.

The DOCs for the WD8003E from the TH99 collection can be a little misleading when it comes to the interrupt jumps. The jumpers on the card are from right to left. In other words, for IRQ 3 close the second jumper from the left. At least I found this confusing.
 
Ahh. Ok. Then we have the same situation. I started off testing what I think is the most current packet driver for SMC card which I found at www.crynwr.com. It was in a zip called 84161150.zip. The file is PKT8000.COM. I cannot get this to work. But as I wrote earlier the older SMC_WD.COM and WD8003E.COM works.

Can you test the PKT8000.COM as well?
 
I can't can't get PKT8000.COM to work on my test rig either. It locks up mid read from the floppy just as was stated in an earlier reply. I have a board with a V20, but it's buried. I'll try to dig it out and test this again.
 
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