3Com (R) Corporation EtherDisk (R) Diskette for the 3C90X Fast EtherLink XL/EtherLink XL Bus Master NIC Family Remote Wake Up Frequently Asked Questions Q: How can I tell if my NIC is Remote Wake Up capable or not? A: There are 2 methods to check the card. The first method, which is the easiest if your NIC is currently installed in a PC, involves running the diagnostics utility (DOS or Windows based). To do this, perform the following: DOS: 1) Execute 3C90XCFG.EXE from a clean DOS boot. 2) Click on View NIC information. 3) If the entry for the 'Remote wake-up connector' is 'YES', then this will indicate that you have a RWU board. Windows: 1) Double click the 3Com icon at the System Tray or execute 3NICDIAG.EXE from the Windows\System directory. 2) Click on the 'NIC Details...' button. 3) If the entry for the 'Remote wake-up connector' is 'YES', then this will indicate that you have a RWU board. The second method requires the user to remove the cover for the PC and locate the AUX power cable. This power cable is the one that connects the NIC to the motherboard. The connector on the NIC is located to the right of the Bootprom socket with the bracket positioned facing left. Q: Is my 3Com Remote Wake Up NIC supported in a PC that is not capable of Remote Wake Up? A: Yes. The NIC can be used in any legacy PC that meets the system requirements outlined in the User Guide but the Remote Wake Up capability of the NIC can only be utilized in PC's specifically designed for this function. Q: Which PC's support Remote Wake Up? Which ones don't? A: Remote Wake Up is supported in PC's that have a 3 pin header on the motherboard for RWU, a power supply that provides auxiliary power and a BIOS that supports RWU. When all three are present, the RWU functionality of the NIC should work. Presently, only certain Pentium based machines can possess this feature. No 486 based machines support RWU. For further information contact your PC manufacturer or vendor to determine if your PC is RWU capable. Q: Is there anything in the BIOS that I can check to see if RWU is enabled? A: Typically, the BIOS contains user configurable settings for waking up the PC on PME or LAN signals. This might be under the Power or Boot category of the BIOS. If you are experiencing difficulties locating this, please refer to your PC's reference manual or contact your PC vendor for specific instructions on accessing the BIOS Q: What type of software is compatible for waking up my 3Com RWU NIC? A: The 3Com RWU NIC is compatible with software that conforms to AMD's specification for the Magic Packet. Examples are: Intel LanDesk Manager, Tivoli TME 10, Microsoft SMS, HP Openview Top Tool, Computer Associates' UniCenter and McAfee. Q: What is a magic packet? A: A magic packet is a valid Ethernet packet that contains a synchronization stream immediately followed by 16 repetitions of the destination MAC address. The synchronize stream is a 6 byte field of F's. This magic packet is not protocol specific. It can be IP, IPX, etc as long as it contains the sync stream and the 16 repetitions. This magic packet can be routed in order to wake up a remote PC. Since it is a valid Ethernet address, the RWU NIC can accept broadcast or multicast packets as long as the NIC's MAC address follows the above format. Q: What if I want to disable the Remote Wake Up function? A: You can disable this function by editing the system registry. The keywords are: WAKEONLINK and WAKEONMAGIC. Q: What is WAKEONLINK? A: WAKEONLINK is a registry keyword that when set to "yes" gives the Remote Wake Up NIC the ability to wake up a PC in stand by or suspend mode simply by disconnecting or reconnecting the network cable connection. This feature can be useful when troubleshooting a system that is not waking up. Note that WAKEONLINK default entry is disabled. Q: What OS's support RWU? A: RWU is currently only supported in Microsoft's Win95 OSR2 and NT4.0. Q: How do I suspend my PC for RWU? A: This process will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. If the PC has its own power sustain mode, you could perform a shut down of the machine and it will shut down into a suspend mode. This low power consumption suspend mode will wake up once a magic packet is detected by the RWU NIC. Q: What are the pin outs for the AUX power on my NIC? A: There are 3 pins located on the connector on the board. With the dovetail key slot at the bottom, pin 1 is located on the right. Pin 1.....+5V Standby power Pin 2.....ground Pin 3.....PME signal Q: When I install the RWU NIC, the install process doesn't prompt for any files and the Remote Wake Up functionality doesn't work. What's wrong? A: Problems could arise if the user installs a new NIC in a PC which had Windows 95 OSR2 installed. During the installation of the new NIC, the Windows NIC install process uses the old W95EL90X.INF file shipped with the system and will not copy over the new drivers. Moreover, no warning messages will occur. Thus, with a RWU NIC, the failure to copy new drivers to the OS will result in the Remote Wake Up function being disabled. To alleviate this problem, locate the old W95EL90X.INF, EL90X.DOS, EL90X.VXD files located in the C:\Windows\Options\Cabs directory and either rename them or delete them. Currently, the Gateway 2000 E-3000 is the only machine that 3Com has experienced this issue. Q: When my Windows 95 OSR2 machine wakes up from a suspend mode, I loose my NetWare drive mappings, how can I correct this? A: Once the machine goes into a suspend mode, the RWU NIC no longer transmits packets out onto the wire. This becomes an issue for NetWare since it will drop the drive mapping when it no longer receives a packet from the station. This is a NetWare related issue and the current work around for this is to reboot the machine to reestablish the NetWare drive mappings. Q: Will my RWU NIC respond to ARP requests when it is asleep? A: No. Since the NIC will not transmit when it is asleep, it will not respond to ARP requests. Thus, if the management station and the Remote Wake Up machine are on different subnets of the router and the router's ARP table is flushed, the RWU NIC would not be able to respond to the ARP request generated by the router that results from the magic packet that is sent from the management station to the IP address of the RWU client. Fortunately, most management applications utilize broadcast IP address rather than unicast packets to the RWU station. A broadcast IP address causes the router to broadcast the magic packet to the client's subnet which wakes the RWU station up. Q: What is ACPI? A: Advanced Configuration and Power Interface. It is a specification developed by Intel, Microsoft, and Toshiba Corp which allows more advanced power management features through the operating system to the hardware interfaces. (%VER WAKEFAG.TXT - Release Notes v1.0b)Download Driver Pack
After your driver has been downloaded, follow these simple steps to install it.
Expand the archive file (if the download file is in zip or rar format).
If the expanded file has an .exe extension, double click it and follow the installation instructions.
Otherwise, open Device Manager by right-clicking the Start menu and selecting Device Manager.
Find the device and model you want to update in the device list.
Double-click on it to open the Properties dialog box.
From the Properties dialog box, select the Driver tab.
Click the Update Driver button, then follow the instructions.
Very important: You must reboot your system to ensure that any driver updates have taken effect.
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