Lions and Tigers and bad NIC cards oh my!

Gary L. Robinson

I started having some problems with my Flex 6400 the last few weeks.  On receive and transmit on the Panadaptor I would have intermittent freezes.  They seemed random and then yesterday they got worse.

It's funny, but whenever things like this happen many folks (myself included) look to the radio as the culprit hihi  Well, this morning my problem stopped being intermittent and the radio stopped communicating at all with the computer.

But it was NOT the Flex - but rather it was my on board NIC that went bad hihi  A quick test with a USB NIC I had put me back in business with no problems.  Then this morning, after a lengthy search of the radio shack - I found another gigabyte NIC card that I put inside the computer.

This is only the second time I have ever seen a NIC card fail in 30 years of computing but it's just funny how we sometimes blame the wrong item - until we take a closer look.

---Gary WB8ROL

Wayne

It just makes sense though to suspect the component with the lesser reliability history first before completely troubleshooting it.

Ken Hansen

I worked in desktop support in a public school district and kept literally hundreds of slightly older computers running every day for years. Then one day I confronted a problem I just couldn't resolve, no matter what I tried. Finally, out of desperation, I swapped out the memory as I methodically went through every possibility. In 30 years of working in and around computers that was a first, and a reminder about making assumptions about problems.

Bob K8RC

In my experience, the problem is solved by the organization with the best service culture regardless of the actual source of the problem. 

As far as "reliability history", I am sure that a search of network problems on this forum will reveal that the radio is rarely, if ever, the source of the problem.

Jim Gilliam

Looks like you solved your problem just in the "nic" of time.

Jim, K6QE

Ernest

Thank you K8RC,
You hit it out of the park with your reply Bob.
I just wish that others would do the same, as you stated. 
There is so much repetition on the forum that I delete 70% of the new ones being posted.  This generation of knob-less radio hams are waiting for someone to do their searching and hold their hands to turn the manual pages.
An this also applies to so call Extra class operators that have no idea what a screwdriver is use for!

Mike W1BFA in Maine

Jim, you should be turned into the moderator for that reply! :-). Mike

Michael Coslo

I have regular failures due to Windows 10 updates. The radio has never failed, but the W10 computer is as reliable as a Trabant. or a Yugo