I've used the old 3com cards and never had a problem.  I'm curious about 
the problem Patrick had with them on a dual-booting machine.  I've had 
issues with NICs on dual booting machines.  The problem?  Windows must 
leave the card in some inappropriate state after a soft reboot 
(restart).  It sometimes takes a hard reboot (power down) to get the NIC 
to work properly.  Note, I had this problem on my workstation (AMD 500, 
motherboard SiS), but when I upgraded the system (AMD 1600, Elite 
motherboard), that problem disappeared.  It took *forever* to figure 
that one out :(

Brian Densmore wrote:

> Wow! I've never had any problems with 3Com NICs. I've found them to be 
> very reliable in Linux/Win/dual boot. I have 3C905Bs and had only one 
> problem with them. One had bet forced and set into 10MB half duplex 
> mode. This required a reset from dos. Of course 3Coms are expensive so 
> I only buy used ones. I actually prefer 3Coms. Had problems with some 
> others, currently have a stock of some real cheapy no-name NICs I 
> bought for a great value. I had to upgrade my kernel to use them 
> because of the driver issues. But they've been great since.
>
>     -----Original Message-----
>     From: Patrick Thurmond [mailto:p_thurmond@yahoo.com]
>     Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 12:27 AM
>     To: Aaron; kclug@kclug.org
>     Subject: Re: biased feeling against 3com
>
>     I agree with you in cross platform and brand use, but I will
>     definitely stress that 3COM is a waste of money. I used to help
>     run a network for a school district and the main Admin was
>     obsessed with 3Com and we got an order of 200 3c905b nics and none
>     of them worked on any dual-boot windows nt-98 systems, only 5
>     worked with Novell, none worked with Linux, and the rest just
>     plain didn't work. We had to exchange all 200 for a better model
>     which gave us alot of problems and we had to reflash half the
>     second batch. I then convinced the Admin to try Linksys and we
>     NEVER had a problem, whether it was dual boot, or any version of
>     Windows, Linux, or Novell. And the best thing about it is that the
>     NICs cost half that of the 3Com nics. Sorry but 3Com will never,
>     ever be ordered by me in this lifetime.
>
>      Aaron wrote:
>
>         Now don't take this the wrong way. I don't know you and I have
>         no idea what
>         your level of experience/expertise is. This is simply my
>         thought on this
>         because I see so many people in the same boat your in.
>
>         Why would you ever sink all your expertise in one vendor?
>         Especially with
>         the way this market is (and always has been). I too was a 3com
>         based
>         network engineer. When they dropped all the core products I
>         simply moved to
>         Cisco. I had taken the time to study both and could move
>         between the two
>         with equal proficiency, ad I can with Lucent (Ascend) and even
>         the crappy
>         low end junk (Netopia, etc...)
>
>         Again, not a personal slam, but I see this all the time. Like
>         Linux.... I
>         love Linux. it's my preferred OS. I'll never give up Microsoft or
>         Solaris... I can administer them all equally. If some day
>         everyone stops
>         using Windoze, I can move to Linux, or mayb! e everyone will
>         suddenly switch
>         to Solaris. I can do that also.
>
>         The point is that the fundamentals are all the same. It just
>         takes a little
>         tweaking (and remembering not to type ls on a dos/windows
>         box... oh, that's
>         embarrassing...) and it makes for great job security.
>
>         Aaron
>
>         ----- Original Message -----
>         From: "mike neuliep"
>         To:
>         Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2002 9:46 AM
>         Subject: biased feeling against 3com
>
>
>         > This is just my two cent's worth so don't take it as
>         anything beyond that:
>         >
>         > I will never recommend the purchase of any other 3com
>         product to anyone
>         ever
>         > again. Three weeks before they broke up the company and
>         exited the high
>         end
>         > switch market (which they're back into it again) I purchased
>         $600000 worth
>         of
>         > equipment from them. Four months later our company traded
>         all the core
>         > builders in for comparable cisco equipment.! 3com's decision
>         to do this
>         > basically changed my care! er because previous to that I had
>         been a 3com
>         based
>         > network engineer deploying 3com routers, switches and remote
>         access
>         devices
>         > where ever I worked. This company has no customer loyalty
>         and the support
>         > is not very good. Hell it was never very good even when I
>         did advocate
>         their
>         > products. *sigh* Only if I had started in with cisco
>         products from day
>         one
>         > I might have had a better career...
>         >
>         > Mike
>
>
>
>
>         majordomo@kclug.org
>
>
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