Racore/Micron Token Ring Install Issues
Support Bulletin No. 2000 Date: 02/10/99 (rev. 1.1.5)
Problem History: Over the past couple of months the Racore Technical Support Group has been receiving phone calls from various offices reporting functionality problems between the Racore 8158 Fiber optic Token Ring cards and Micron PC’s. The Racore Technical Support Group has determined that there are two problem scenarios, causing the Racore 8158 cards to not function properly. These problems can be traced back to improper installation of the Racore 8158 during the build up and configuration of the Micron PC’s. The problem descriptions below, along with their accompanying solutions, appear to be long, but in fact take only a few minutes to do. The Racore Technical Support Group has been successful in helping end users in restoring functionality to their Racore 8158 / Micron PC’s. It is the hope of the Racore Technical Support Group, that in writing and distributing this document, it will help to eliminate some of the frustration being expressed by end users and to show that the problems being reported are simply configuration issues, and not compatibly or functionality issues.
Problem Description: Two problem scenarios were found as described below, along with solutions to the reported problems. It appears that the installation process of the Racore 8158 cards at Micron was not completed properly. The machines were started and during the install process, Windows 95 asked for drivers for the Racore card, but was told to NOT install the drivers and NOTto try and install the card next time Windows 95 started. The other reported problem, relates to the BIOS for the Micron machine and its failure to detect an Interrupt conflict between the ISA bus based sound card and the PCI bus based Racore cards.
Problem #1: Racore 8158 card is installed with drivers loaded, but fails to connect to network. To check this go to the My Computer icon/Control Panel icon /Systems icon and checking in the Systems device manager.If a yellow question mark (Other devices) is found, click on the yellow question mark(Other devices), and another yellow question mark/PCI Token Ring Controller is displayed. This indicates that the Racore 8158 installation was not completed properly.
It is likely that during startup the Racore card was detected and the Install Wizard attempted to install drivers for the Racore card. At this point the installation was canceled and the Install wizard of Windows placed the Racore card in the Other devices, and the Racore card is excluded from installation by the Install Wizard. What generally happens next is the user attempts to install the Racore card drivers manually. The Windows 95/98 drivers for the Racore 8158 card can not be installed manually. The Racore 8158 card is plug and play compliant and must be installed by the Windows 95/98 install wizards during startup.
Solution: Delete the Token Ring adapter card found in Other devices, by highlighting PCI Token Ring Controller and then clicking on the remove box. If the drivers for the Racore 8158 card have been installed manually they must be removed from the network configuration. This is done by going to My computer icon, then the Control Panel icon, and then the Network icon. Highlight the Racore driver and then hit the delete key. Hit Ok and then reboot machine. The card should now be seen at boot up by the Install Wizard as a new card and will ask for the cards drivers from the drivers diskette, installation should proceed normally.
Problem #2: The Racore 8158 appears to be installed properly, but the card cannot browse the network, nor connect to other machine or servers. In checking in the Systems/Device manager, under Network adapters it shows that the Racore card is functioning properly. Clicking on Network adapters the Racore Preferred PCI Token Ring Adapter is shown.
Double click on the Racore Preferred PCI Token Ring Adapter and then click on the Resources Tab. We see:
The Racore Card is set to Interrupt Request 05.
In Device manager click on the Crystal Audio System Sound Card is set to
Interrupt Request 05.
Both the Racore Fiber Optic Token Ring PCI bus card and the Crystal Audio System Sound ISA bus device are set to Interrupt Request 05. This is where the conflict lies. The Racore card is a PCI bus card and the Crystal Audio System Sound is an ISA bus device. PCI and ISA devices typically can not share the same Interrupt, in this case Interrupt Request 05.
Solution: Go into Micron's system BIOS in the advanced section, under Resource configuration and set interrupt 05 to Reserved from Available. When the system is re-booted the Racore card comes up as Interrupt 09 or 11 (see Example below), and are available interrupts for Plug and Play devices. The Crystal Sound card stays at 05.
After re-booting the machine, the Racore 8158 card and drivers should perform normally
