Quazl Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 What is a good, solid, but cheap PXE PCI NIC CarI haven't decided whether or not to buy a card that is supported by the RIS floppy or to buy NIC cards that are PXE enabled?I was wondering on what your opinion is on a good PXE PCI NIC card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RogueSpear Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 I'm not sure if you can even find them anymore, but I always loved the 3Com 3C905C PCI NICs. Seems now that everything I buy comes with a builtin NIC these days. But I still support a lot of systems with these older 3Coms in them and they work fantastic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fencer128 Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 Hi,Well from experience I can say that 3com cards seem to go well, and Intel ones too. I use the Intel PRO/1000 series cards personally without issue.Best to stay away from Realtek. Marvell and Broadcom work, but sometimes require a few tweaks to do so.Hope that helps,Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RogueSpear Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 @Fencer, I had always considered the Intel Pro to be the gold standard until your recent issues with that new mobo. It just seems like they're dropping the ball lately on things.As a matter of interest - 3Com is who Microsoft paired up with in the development of the RBFG floppy disk. So you can be fairly confident that it should work with most if not all 3Com NICs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fencer128 Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 Hi,I agree with you on Intel, though as long as you stick with cards and don't rely on on-board solutions you should be ok at the moment... *fingers crossed*.I've never had an issue with 3com cards and RIS so I can also heartlily recommend them too. Interesting observation about the MS - 3Com RIS boot partnership - never knew that.Cheers,Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quazl Posted March 6, 2006 Author Share Posted March 6, 2006 Thanks fellahs.It is amazing something as seemingly simple as Network Installations can end up sucking away almost all free time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fencer128 Posted March 7, 2006 Share Posted March 7, 2006 Hi,"Seemingly" is the key word there! Cheers,Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InTheWayBoy Posted March 10, 2006 Share Posted March 10, 2006 PCI Intels for me as much as possible...I have some Broadcom and Marvell's that are just a pain. I used 905C's for a while, but never for PXE so I can't vouch. But they are nice cards...Realteks are not so good for this from what I hear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mother Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 I've not had too much problems with Realteks myself and they're quite widely supported by most OSsThe 8139 series of cards don't have PXE onboard (if you buy the cheap ones), but you can boot them using the Microsoft PXE floppy. The only quirk that I've come across is that you need to copy your startrom.com and associated files into the root of you RemInst folder on you RIS server. Without doing this, it won't boot and will complain about the TFTP download failing.For £6 per card (or $10.49) you can't really go wrong.Broadcoms are swines - I'd stay away from them at all costs! I had to spend a week trying to build images for our Dell Optiplex systems at work and it wasn't a pleasant experience.Regards,Jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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