Can 1394 go where ethernet went?

October 6, 2007 12:31 PM

My new computer only has 1394 ethernet. My home network is set up with a router... and apparently 1394 cannot connect through a router. Is there a way to get to my internet connection that I don't know about?

I just put together a sweet bleeding-edge computer with a fancy mobo with two ports labeled "Gigabit LAN" and are obviously the ethernet form factor. Thing is, they come up in the system as 1394 spec, which I guess is going to be the next generation of ethernet connectivity. Unfortunately, they seem to be incapable of connecting to things that "normal" ethernet connections work on... like every router out there. Am I missing something here? Or do I just have to go buy a PCI ethernet card?

posted by BlackLeotardFront to computers & internet (9 comments total)

1394 is firewire. Make sure you have the right drivers for your motherboard.
posted by b1tr0t at 12:33 PM on October 6, 2007

No, you probably have the incorrect drivers. Can we get an update on mainboard, operating system/etc ?
posted by iamabot at 12:34 PM on October 6, 2007

More than likely you don't have the drivers for your Gigabit network devices, and you're mistaking the 1394 Network adapters that Windows installs by default for the GigE NICs. Look up the driver pack for your motherboard and install it and you will probably see two more network connections appear in Windows.
posted by yellowbkpk at 12:39 PM on October 6, 2007

Sorry, should have provided specs.
IP35 Pro mobo
Intel Core Duo 2750
1 gig pc800 ddr2sdram
Geforce 8800gts
All running on XP SP2.

The trouble is I don't have a floppy drive around so I can't flash the bios without the guru utility, and I can't use that because it needs to access the bios repository online itself. So I'm kind of in a bind. How would I go about making XP recognize these ports as ethernet?

Here's why I was thinking 1394 is what they are.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:41 PM on October 6, 2007

Hang on though... I'm checking out the mobo's driver site, they have a download specifically for the gigabit ports. I think you guys are totally right, I'll get back to you in a couple minutes once I've transferred these downloads from my mac.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:43 PM on October 6, 2007

You don't need to flash the bios, XP won't have the drivers for most newer boards and their onboard devices, however your maianboard came with a driver CD that has them. If you don
't have the driver CD you'll need to download them and burn them to a CD, put them on a flash drive, or buy a cheepo 20 dollar usb floppy to get them on the machine.
posted by iamabot at 12:55 PM on October 6, 2007

Well, it seems to have found 2 ethernet ports. Now I just have to wrangle with XP's awful hardware driver install process. Thanks guys.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:57 PM on October 6, 2007

1394 is firewire. You can network over firewire, but no one does thus your router expects an ethernet connection.

On the back of your PC you'll find an ethernet port. Try using it. If not see your hardware manager and see if there are any unreconized devices. If so install the proper drivers.

On the back of your computer you'll see a type1 connector. Thats the firewire.
posted by damn dirty ape at 1:21 PM on October 6, 2007

Note that if you look in Window's Device Manger app (buried in a control panel or Windows Management), you'll probably see a couple of entries highlighted with a question mark and a label like "Unknown Ethernet Device". Once you have downloaded the drivers, you can right-click on these entries to bring up the properties dialog, which contains a tab that'll take you to *another* dialog for installing them.
posted by speedo at 4:04 PM on October 6, 2007