Media for Force NIC to 100 Mbps

Force NIC to 100 Mbps

I have a desktop computer that's a few years old, I ressurected it just there a few days ago. The NIC in it is the "3Com EtherLink III ISAPNP", also known as the 3Com 3c509b, which is about a decade old at this stage.

The card is capable of both 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps. The card was designed in the period when 100 Mbps was being phased in and so while it *can* work at 100 Mbps, it defaults to 10 Mbps when it checks the line (irrespective of whether other hosts on the collision domain are working at 100 Mbps).

I have a boot disk for the card which lets me set its settings (e.g. I can set it to work in Full Duplex), but it doesn't let me choose whether to use 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps.

Does anyone know of a way of forcing a NIC to 100 Mbps? Or does anyone have experience with this particular card and know a way of getting it to work at 100 Mbps? I'm working with Windows XP Pro SP2.

Thanks for reading