The NE2000 doesn’t have the best reputation, and that may not exactly be deserved. Today, the biggest problem with them is getting a jumperless NE2000 card configured when you don’t have the disks that came with it, and you can’t find any identifying marks on the card that point you to a manufacturer. Furthermore, even if you identify the card, the setup disk may or may not be available anywhere. So it’s not exactly a wonder that most retro Youtubers just use 3com and Intel cards.
But there is one advantage to the NE2000 clones today. If you want to use an XTIDE ROM, it’s easier to get them working in an NE2000 than in a 3Com or Intel card. Just configure the image to write the necessary checksum to it, write a 27C128 EPROM, plug it into the socket, and as long as you can get the ROM socket enabled, it works. That’s not always the case with the big name brand cards.
The jumperless NE2000 clone cards only used a few different chipsets. That works to our advantage today. The configuration utilities from one card often work on another.
The first thing to try is to download the BSDwall network card support disk. Write the disk to a floppy, or just open it up with 7zip and move the executables over to a functioning PC with ISA slots.
Using the software to configure your mystery NE2000 NIC
With the software running on a suitable machine, it’s just a matter of installing the card, then booting to DOS with no memory management and as few drivers loaded as possible. Holding down shift while booting is a good method. Then try one of the following executables to try to configure the card:
- Setup.exe
- AutoNic.exe
- NicSet.exe
- Diag.exe
- DLink220.exe
If the executable can’t find a card, move on to the next one.
I was able to use this method to get all of my NE2000 clones configured to 0x300, IRQ 10, and a boot ROM at c800. With that done, using them from DOS is really easy.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.