[Question] Dedicated Legacy Rig for MVP 05 - Networking/NIC Driver Conflicts

[vonaton738]

Hey everyone, I’ve been a long-time lurker here, mostly downloading stadium textures and roster updates, but I’ve finally run into a hardware snag that I can't solve on my own. I recently decided to build a dedicated "legacy" rig specifically for MVP Baseball 2005 and some of the older total conversion mods. There's just something about the original engine that feels more responsive on native hardware compared to running it on Windows 11 with a bunch of compatibility wrappers.

 

I'm currently having a weird issue while trying to set up a stable environment for some local head-to-head play. The onboard LAN on this older motherboard was completely shot, so I installed a simple, dedicated 1-port network adapter I had in my spare parts bin. The specific point I'm struggling with is that every time I try to launch some of the older roster editors or stadium tools that seem to ping a local network for verification, the adapter causes a massive latency spike or just drops the connection entirely. It’s incredibly frustrating because the mods themselves look incredible—the work you guys do on the 4K overlays is insane—but I can’t stay connected long enough to actually test a full game without it stuttering.

 

I’ve tried rolling back the drivers to something from the 2010 era, but it feels like even this basic 1-port NIC just doesn't want to play nice with the older game protocols. I remember back in the day we used to have to manually tweak MTU settings just to get a stable connection for roster syncs.

Is anyone else still running a dedicated XP or Win 7 machine for modding, and if so, have you run into similar hardware conflicts with modern-ish networking cards? Or am I better off just trying to find an even older PCI card to match the era of the machine?