A1200, OS 3.9, cnet.device... and no hope left

[Mikko_PKP]

OK, I am officially at my wit's end. I bought a PCMCIA network card off an Amiga retailer (guaranteed to work with my Amy, that is), put in the included piggyback fix for the A1200 cardreset bug and installed the OS 3.9 network package. However, that's where the problems started.

I cannot get the network to do anything useful. Usually Genesis gets me "online", but sometimes it just freezes the system completely and does nothing. I can usually resume operation by removing the card. Even when I do get "online" I cannot get A-Web to display a single page, it freezes the system as well - reads a few bytes, then freezes, continues after a while, freezes again. Occasionally I do get rid of the freezing, but then, DNS does not work.

I cannot ping the machine from my Linux box on the same network.

My setup:

A1200 (Commodore)
Blizzard A1260/50 + 64 MB FastRAM
2.1 GB internal HDD
OS 3.9


Network setup:

* Target Network 24007 10 Mbps PCMCIA card
* cnet.device 1.8b (standard version)
* D-Link 604 Router/Firewall
- DHCP activated (for Windows machines, Xbox & PS2 use), but Amiga assigned to a static IP (192.168.0.xxx) unused by anything else. Linux box works fine with similar static IP.
- Address of router (192.168.0.1) entered as gateway
- DNS server valid (from resolv.conf of my Linux box), entered as DNS server in Genesis
- No hostname/domainname entered at the moment, experimented with several...
* Internet access via a cable modem behind the D-Link so shouldn't really affect results.

Any help GREATLY appreciated.

[Gerbinist]

Try CardReset from Aminet. It did a lot of good once on my machine and it makes the hardware fix obsolete too. Just put it in S-S

[Mikko_PKP]

Yee-haw! I installed CardReset, removed the piggyback, and hey presto! For the first time I can actually load up web pages. Thanks a million!

[SilvrDrgn]

What exactly is this "piggyback" fix for the reset you're talking about

[SamuraiCrow]

The piggyback fix is designed to reset the PCMCIA port during a warm-reboot.  It's just to fix a bug in the a1200 motherboard.

[Mikko_PKP]

Yes, it is a thing that sits on the Gayle chip.

But more on the topic, all is still not well in the world of networking. A-Web now loads pages more often than not, the freezing has become more occasional, but BlackIRC and SimpleFTP crash, among others. I cannot help but wonder that there's still something wrong in my system.

[SilvrDrgn]

SamuraiCrow wrote:
The piggyback fix is designed to reset the PCMCIA port during a warm-reboot.  It's just to fix a bug in the a1200 motherboard.

Yes, I know that, but I was wanting _exactly_ what was being talked about.  I.E.  Is it a hardware fix or a software fix?

Now that I see the other post, it sounds like a hardware one.  I had one of those in my A1200 (that I used to own) that I got from Power Computing.  It pushed over the top of the Gayle chip, I believe, and it worked great!

@ Mikko_PKP,
Yes, I think you have something wrong with your system.  Who knows what that would be though??  Installed anything recently ??

[Mikko_PKP]

It's funny that everything worked fine until I put in the network stuff. And it seems to grow worse and worse, after the initial boot with CardPatch & CardReset everything was great, now Genesis has real trouble even finding the card.

And if I take the card out, everything works again. I have an external PCMCIA CD-ROM drive and that runs like there's no tomorrow. There's nothing funny in my startup-sequence or user-startup as far as I can see.

[HopperJF]

maybe its a dodgy card?  :-?

[Mikko_PKP]

That's easy to test, I'll try it on my laptop...

[HopperJF]

if it works fine on your laptop then there might be an issue with the pins in your PCMCIA slot
get a torch and try and see if none of them are bent

a lot of A600s and A1200s started suffering from bent pins, especially after the advent of the squirrel and other pcmcia products

[Mikko_PKP]

Tested: card works fine on Windows XP.

[amiga1260]

I also have problems with a PCMCIA card inserted. My Amiga 1200 doesn't boot when the network card inserted. First I have to switch it on and then put the network card in the A1200. I have two A1200's and they have both rev 1d4.

[HopperJF]

Mikko_PKP wrote:
Tested: card works fine on Windows XP.

have you had a look at the pins in your pcmcia slot (on the amiga)

[Mikko_PKP]

Checked the PCMCIA port, no bent pins.