Intel PRO/1000 PT Dual Port PC Not Booting

[maxtim]

I've just installed pfSense to my old PC that I would like to turn into a router. I went ahead with the installation despite my inability to get the NIC to work. I have four PCI slots: two x8, one x1, and one x16. The latter is the only one I can successfully mount the Intel Pro/1000 PT dual port NIC. The slot, however, is typically reserved for a graphics card. Upon booting, the error beeps from the motherboard reflect this issue.

Is there a way to force the motherboard to recognize the slot as anything other than the graphics card? I have tried going to BIOS and forcing it to use the onboard graphics chip. I have also read something about using a master/slave configuration with PCI. I might be confused about this idea and there are no option for such a configuration. There is an option for IDE master/slave, but I figured that would be irrelevant.

The motherboard is quite old, so I thought one work-around might be to update the BIOS. I can't find a BIOS update. Maybe I've been looking in the wrong place.

Any help would be appreciated, but, to be honest, I'm not really expecting much as this is a very specific issue.

Build specifics:
Motherboard: ECS build MCP73VT-PM
BIOS version: American Mega Trends P01-A1 circa 2009
NIC: Intel Pro/1000 PT dual port
Original PC build: eMachines ET1831-07
Processor: Intel Pentium E5400

I think that's all the pertinent information. If you require more info, I'll update this post.

Thank you in advanced for any help.

[dreamslacker]

That chipset doesn't support what you are trying to do.

Specifically, using the PCIe x16 slot will disable the onboard graphics.

You could in theory do so if you add a PCI graphics card to keep the board happy.