Realtek 8111e vs. Precise

[Basil Chupin]

On 07/03/13 08:47, Ric Moore wrote:
> On 03/06/2013 08:50 AM, Basil Chupin wrote:
>> On 05/03/13 05:26, MR ZenWiz wrote:
>>> I picked up a new motherboard last Friday, an MSI 970A-G46, that has
>>> the noted LAN controller on board, and when I first brought it up it
>>> ran flawlessly.  Saturday morning I replaced one of my DVD writers and
>>> my secondary hard disk, and the LAN died.  I thought it was the
>>> hardware, since it was working before the power cycle, but I got an
>>> exchange yesterday afternoon and it has the same problem.
>> [pruned]
>>
>>> (I temporarily solved the problem by putting a PCI NIC in the box, and
>>> that works fine, but it's old 10/100 and I prefer not to have to use
>>> add-in cards for that sort of thing.)
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>> MR
>>
>> I just read Colin's post where he mentions the NIC and realised that I
>> missed reading your opening post.
>>
>> For what it's worth, I built my own computer early last year. The
>> motherboard is a Gigabyte. Exactly the same thing happened to me: the
>> onboard LAN collapsed on the 3rid or 4th day following me doing some
>> hardware additions. I didn't bother trying to work out the whys of it
>> and just went out and bought a 1Gb PCIe NIC and installed it.
>>
>> In your case, did you really mean that you installed a PCI card or a
>> PCIe card?
>>
>> For best performance, install the NIC as close to the cpu as possible.
>> If it is a PCIe card then there is such a slot almost (well.... you know
>> what I mean :-) ) on top of the cpu.
>
> I missed that as well... and I had picked up a used MSI mobo for 
> cheap, with a two core Intel CPU. Same thing. It died. I jammed in a 
> addon NIC card and forgot about it.
>
> Ha! Come to think on it again, I think it died because of that stamped 
> out piece of tin plate that guards the output ports, that you jam into 
> the case, had a finger stuck into the NIC output jack and fried it. 
> Ever since I just throw them away. <cackles> Ric

I have rethinking about what occurred at my end to zap the onboard LAN.

I always use an anti-static wrist-strap (but you prefer to shove your 
elbows into the sides of the casing, or something :-) ) so even if I 
accidentally shoved my finger (or even the stamped out piece of tin 
plate) into the LAN port nothing would have happened.

But what DID happen, now that I think about it, is that the manual for 
the motherboard warns that the computer should not be "live" when you 
plug in the LAN cable from the modem/router.

I ignored that warning because there were uncountable times I unplugged 
and replugged the cable at the modem/router's end - BUT this was 
*always* when having a NIC card installed and never using the onboard 
LAN - the Gigabyte mobo I was working on was the first ever mobo with an 
onboard LAN. It seems that the NIC card is more robust and is less 
affected by the sudden application of + and - current.

BC

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