Problems with older 3com 10/100 cards...

[exoxe]

i would like to suggest that this be placed into the faq if possible...

i was having problems with videos playing without them being jittery, as the buffer was dropping all the way down to 0%. i knew that my network topology wasn't the issue, as it was a 10/100 network with no collisions. i tried messing with the buffer options within xbmc's settings, but that didn't help. transferring files to and from the xbox were fast, but sometimes after a while it would die down to 400kb/sec from like 4000kb/sec. i decided to change out the 3com network card in my computer with a linksys and wham, videos and mp3s play without a problem, and the buffer is up to 80-100% on videos now. monitoring the #xbmc irc channel, two other people with 3com cards have also had this problem with videos and mp3s skipping. i am not sure if it's a driver issue within xp, but someone else was running windows 2000 with the same issue. i would suggest to anyone that's having problems with videos playing over smb, if they have a 3com card, try changing it out with another brand and see if that resolves the issue.

[tcghost]

i have a 3com card and it plays fine...maybe you got a faulty one or, like you said, bad drivers...

[Gamester17]

i too have a 3com card with no problems, i would suggest that anyone with network problems first update firmware and drivers to the card plus also test with a (known working) crossover-cable directly to the xbox before replacing any hardware, ...network troubleshooting 101

[stream187]

i've tried it with an old 3com 3c905c-tx nic (latest drivers) and can confirm the streaming problem. when using my onboard realtek nic streaming works perfectly..

[Canned]

::bump::

i just wanted to confirm this behavior.

ever since i went from xbmp to xbmc way back when, everything seemed to slow down that was network related. *everything from browsing my music (when it's getting album info) to trying to play streamed video. *the video was so bad, i couldn't even watch it. *it was very choppy. *eventually i gave up on it assuming it was my server (an older system that's loaded with files) as no one else seemed to be having problems.

however, i stumbled upon this thread last night and checked into it this morning. *sure enough, i had an old 3com network card in there. *i even had another 3com card lying around (also older) and it showed the same bahavior. *finally, i swapped it out with a linksys card and everything works perfectly!

so i can confirm that the older 3com cards are not working right in conjunction with xbmc, even though they seem to be working with any other application. *the two cards i tried were the 3c905b and 3c905c (running on windows server 2003).