*BSD News Article 64657


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From: rrwood@io.org (Roy Wood)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Oddball ethernet problem and solution (of sorts)
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 16:48:51 -0500
Organization: Silicon Angst Software
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <rrwood-2903961648510001@bpci.net3.io.org>
References: <rrwood-2903960739190001@bpci.net3.io.org> <4jh157$6gb@news2.cais.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: bpci.net3.io.org

In article <4jh157$6gb@news2.cais.com>, mcgraw@cais.cais.com (Michael
Curry) wrote:

> Roy Wood (rrwood@io.org) wrote:
> : I tried installing an NE2000-compatible ethernet card yesterday, and
> : encountered some very strange problems.  The first clue was that even
> : though ed0 was recognized by the kernel at boot, it kept timing out.  This
> : suggested that the interrupt was not being detected by FreeBSD (and yes,
> : it was a unique interrupt, not a conflicting one).  
> 
>  Not to ask a silly question, but did you employ the "-c" option at boot, 
> and the "visual" mode process to enter the correct IRQ and port info for 
> the card?

Never even bothered with that-- the DOS-based diagnostic program that came
with the card wasn't even picking up the interrupts, so it didn't seem
worth the effort.  I did recompiled the kernel a couple of times, trying
different interrupts and i/o port addresses (adjusting the jumpers on the
card to match) with no success.  In retrospect, it would have been easier
to boot up with -c, but it always felt like it was on the verge of
working.


>  Is this an Addtron or Enet16 card? If so, initialization of the EEPROM 
> can sometimes make the BNC/RJ45 recognition problem go away, IF that is 
> what the sympton truly is.

Nope-- it was made by Commodore's network division, back when there was
such a thing.


I suspect that it's an obscure timing problem related to this
card/motherboard combination.  The card works fine in a 486 I tried, and
it claims to work fine in the Pentium board when configured for
twisted-pair operation.  Go figure.

-Roy