I have a GA-7VAXP-Ultra V1.0 motherboard which I use in a home built Windows Home Server (WHS) V1. I use a WHS add-on, "Lights Out", to wake up the server when one of the client machines is turned on. It achieves this by Wake On Lan (WOL). Ten minutes after the last client is switched off, Lights Out shuts down the server which then waits for WOL, usually the next day.
This works absolutely fine using the on-board Ethernet port which is driven by a Realtek 8100BL chip. This, I believe is the same as the Realtek 8139 and is a 10/100mbps Fast Ethernet interface. Due to the way I use the server to serve media, audio and video to 3 client machines and a Smart TV, I want to upgrade the server to a gigabit interface. I bought a PCI gigabit NIC which uses the Realtek 8169 chip which is a 10/100/1000mbps device.
This card does not have the 3 pin connector with which to connect to the WOL connector on the motherboard. It does, however comply with PCI 2.2 which routes the WOL signal through the PCI connector onto the motherboard. The GA-7VAXP Ultra is also PCI 2.2 compliant, so in theory this should work by enabling all the WOL bits in the Advanced tab of the NIC properties in Device Manager.
Windows Home Server V1 is based on Windows Server 2003, so drivers are easy to find, but I cannot get this to work. Can anybody help me or do I have to use a NIC which connects to the 3-pin WOL connector on the motherboard.
I know this is an old motherboard, but it is an extremely good motherboard and has all the bits and performance that I need to run this server. I have had this motherboard from new when it was my main system. It performs daily backups on 2 machines and acts as a print server for 3 machines as well as having accounts for all users. I have 170GB of video and 96GB of audio on the HDD and can access this from any node on the network including mobile devices. I can also remotely access this server from anywhere on the Internet by using the built in remote access software.
The server has the following configuration
GA-7VAXP Ultra V1.0 mobo with F7 BIOS
AMD AthlonXP 2800+ CPU
Nvidia Geforce 6200 graphics card
350W PSU with 2A available on +5VSB
2TB of HDD
Connected via Cat5E to TP-Link Gigabit switch
