On 06/20/12 12:21 PM, Gregory P. Ennis wrote: > I am being persuaded that you are right. I'll have to look at the > mother board to answer Dale's question; the machine and the nic card > came from Fry's. I have had pretty good luck with Fry's in the past, > but this has turned out to be a real pain. > > What chip set, or what pci-e nic card would you recommend? I've had good luck with Intel ethernet chips/cards, especially the server oriented ones. one of my recent servers has these NICs... 03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82571EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 06) 03:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82571EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 06) 07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82576 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01) 07:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82576 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01) another has... 03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82574L Gigabit Network Connection 04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82574L Gigabit Network Connection these are both recent Xeon 5600 class CPUs. The first is a HP DL380g6, the 2nd is a whitebox server with a SuperMicro X8DTE-F motherboard. -- john r pierce N 37, W 122 santa cruz ca mid-left coast