🚀 go-pugleaf

Our troublesome Netware 4.1 server has been running fine for some time now
with an NE2000 type card in place of the Accton EN1200 EISA card.  Long
enough to consider the crashing problem "fixed" or at least worked around.
(We were getting server abends several times per day.)

I called Accton technical support and was told that we were suffering
from EISA bus latency, which they referred to as an EISA design defect.
(We also have a DTC 3290 EISA SCSI host adapter in the system.)  We
were told that there are three options:

  1.  Use a 16-bit NIC (which we are currently doing);
  2.  Get a faster CPU (doesn't look feasible in this system,
      an Intel X-Series Deskside with 486DX/50 CPU);
  3.  Change to PCI (meaning purchase a complete new server,
      not an option for us).

What Accton support was saying (they went into gruesome detail regarding
timing and events on the EISA bus) basically seemed to make sense sense
but I am frankly not a low-level hardware guru.  Anyone else run into this
kind of problem running two EISA cards together in the same system? 
Although we're running stably now, having the NE2000 in the system is
making things a little bit slower overall. 

--
     Bob Alpert
     alpert@netaxs.com