HPC 360LX Ethernet Connectivity Issues

So, recently I decided to dust off my HP 360LX and start using it again, since it's a lot easier to pack that up with my work gear than my MobilePro 880 (the idea being I carry around my work Tablet PC, and my personal HPC).

Anyway, I'd hard-reset the 360LX, synched up, installed Service Pack 1, then the driver for the Hawking CF686TX 10/100 ethernet CF card NIC, and then the networking service pack. So far, so good, right?

Um, not so much. I hooked it up to the network, and was told it couldn't resolve an address through DHCP. "No problem," I figured, "I'll just assign a static IP address."

So, I set up one IP address on the Hawking profile in the Network section of the control panel, and another one under the NE2000 profile. I figured that, that way, one of them would be good.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. I still can't seem to connect out to the Internet. In fact, not only can I not seem to connect anywhere, but I can't ping the 360LX, either - I tried pinging both IP addresses, with no response.

So, I'm at a bit of a loss here. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what might be going on?

probably the card doesn't like the CE ne2000 driver (if the card is ne2000)

I'm reasonably sure that isn't it, unless it's a situation where the NE2000 driver and 686 driver suddenly decided to really start conflicting.

See, I've had this config working before (before the involuntary "I should really keep a better eye on the backup battery" hard reset), and I can't think of anything different this time out.

oh so the card isnt a ne2000 one? your desc with mentioning ne2000 was confusing.

anyway, maybe install NSP first and only after that the card driver, and soft reset between the two installations.

I followed what you were saying. Interestingly, this Hawking CF686TX 10/100 NIC hasn't been entered into the HCL, so let's hope that we can get it in there come the end of this

From what I can gather from the driver, the card is in fact a NE2000 chipped device. What I suggest that you do it hard reset the 300 series, install SP1, then the NSP and do not install the drivers from Hawking. When you put the card into the device for the first time, it will ask you for a driver name. Enter ne2000.dll and see what happens.

Well, prior to recent goofiness (ie. hard resets on both devices), I had the 686TX functioning normally on both my 360LX and my MobilePro 880, so we might be able to add it to the HPC2.0 and 2.11 HCLs. I just wish I could remember how I had the 360LX configured.



Hmm, I'll give that a try. I've got a full data backup from prior to installing SP1 and the NSP, so it shouldn't be any major difficulty to try that.

Keep us appraised

OK, I'm reasonably sure the card itself has gone bad. So far, I've tested it on both my 360LX and my MobilePro 880, and the results are the same on both machines.

Externally, everything seems to be working fine: all the lights come on the way you'd expect them to, but it absolutely refuses to get an IP address from a DHCP server (and I've tried both on multiple LANs, just to be sure). Switching to a static IP setup doesn't work either: the HPC/HPC Pro can't ping anyone, and I can't ping it.

Kind of sucks, because it had been working really, really well on both machines. The next step, I suppose, would be to confirm it's bad by testing it on a machine running 2000 or XP, but if it won't work on one of the HPCs, it's kind of pointless.