SMC EZ Card 10/100 (SMC1255TX) driver

[UCyborg]

I dug out a prehistoric Ethernet card from the basement and installed it in my PC, but suitable Windows drivers don't seem to exist.

The closest match is here (Windows XP 32-bit), that won't ever load on 64-bit OS. The link also contains the full device ID minus &REV_11.

I also found some newer drivers here, also in 64-bit flavor, (2nd link), if you open the package, INF also references SMC EZ Card 10/100 (SMC 1255TX-1), though the ID doesn't match and it's apparently a bit different. Force installing just greets me with The device cannot start. (Code 10) message.

The card is functional on 64-bit Linux Ubuntu 15.10. I haven't tried any later distros, but I suppose there are good chances that it still works. The message from the driver in dmesg referenced the card as AN983B, which lead me to the driver here, this one actually references very similar ID as my actual card, VEN and DEV parts match, but subsystem part differs. Again, the same error as with the previous driver. Also tested and it doesn't work on Windows XP x64 neither.

So I suppose the only way to get this card to work on 64-bit Windows would be to study Linux driver and write a new Windows driver. Or is there another way?

There's an EOL section on SMC Networks website, there's stuff for SMC1255TX-1 and SMC1255TX-2, but nothing for SMC1255TX. Guess it's really a lost relic.

Edited December 8, 2020 by UCyborg

[UCyborg]

Doesn't work reliably on Linux. Maybe for 2 minutes, then pinging fails, browsers get stuck...so much for keeping a spare card.

Edit: never mind, works now. Not sure what the issue was... Well, that still doesn't solve the problem that it doesn't work on Windows.

Edited December 9, 2020 by UCyborg

[UCyborg]

My computer went to sleep yesterday and then didn't wake up, just fans were spinning, it didn't respond to reset button. Turning it off and on again, no change. I took the card out and then it started working.

Guess I'm better of buying a new ethernet card. It isn't as much of an emergency as long as the phone works. There's no cable setup in this house, but sometimes I plugged the PC to my laptop, which has ethernet and wireless adapters bridged so that way I could connect the PC directly to the home network without having a NAT point in the way.

The backstory is that I've apparently damaged onboard ethernet card by accidentally plugging in PS/2 keyboard while the computer was on. It's still detected by the OS, but AI NET 2 in BIOS reports funky status for pairs 4-5 (alternates between "Open" and "Failed") and 7-8 (constant "Open"). The normal status is "Normal".

I don't suppose it can be fixed and even if it was taken somewhere for the repair, I imagine the cost would go way beyond the price of a new ethernet card. Oh well...

[UCyborg]

I don't know what the heck changed, but few days ago, I connected my desktop to a laptop via Ethernet cable, I used the Ethernet port of the onboard network adapter and it worked...still works today, though AI NET 2 reports status Short for pairs 4-5 and 7-8, but it can still work in 10/100 mode.

Is it possible that I somehow ended up with 2 bad cables, considering different length (where the fault occurs) reported for 2 cables' problematic pairs that I have, which would make one assume the circuitry still works? I haven't actually tried the other cable since the one used initially started working. I find it strange that the other cable didn't work back then, it looks good as new, and was pretty much left alone all the time back when it was still in use years ago.