Add hardware later?

[Mike Bilow]

You missed it:

	http://support.3com.com/infodeli/tools/nic/3c509b.htm

What you actually want are the Etherdisk images:

	ftp://ftp.3com.com/pub/nic/3c509/3c509x1.exe
	ftp://ftp.3com.com/pub/nic/3c509/3c509x2.exe

The config program is 3C5X9CFG.EXE, which must be run under DOS without
any driver loaded.  That is, boot from a bare DOS floppy.  The user
interface sucks, but you very rarely have to run this program and all you
need to remember is that the tab key is your friend.

I recommend that you disable Plug-and-Play mode on the cards if it is
available.  There are lots of variations on the 3C509, so exactly which
options you see may vary.  It is possible to use these cards in PnP mode
with Linux isapnptools, but there is really no point and configuring the
network, especially if you use DHCP, could be quite a lot harder.

All of the 3C5x9 series will autodetect under Linux because the cards have
a configuration reading register which resides in the machine I/O space.  
That is, the driver interrogates the card directly to learn its base
address and IRQ settings.  This does not necessarily mean that the driver
will succeed in loading, since the necessary address range or IRQ may have
been claimed by a prior Linux driver if there is a conflict.

It is not generally possible to autodetect NE2000 cards.  Among other
things, there is no standard way to read configuration information from
NE2000 cards, and different chipset makers provide incompatible and
proprietary extensions.  If the NE2000 card is jumperless and does not
support PnP, then you need the configuration software from the vendor of
your particular card.  Some of the more common NE2000 chipset makers post
reference implementations of their configuration tools, but these often
require that you download them from a Taiwanese server and that you have
some proficiency in Chinese, assuming you can even determine the maker.

-- Mike


On 2000-07-10 at 09:38 -0400, Ron Peterson wrote:

> David Kramer wrote:
* * *
> Every Linux installation I've done to date has autodetected the card(s)
> I want to use.  If not, recompiling the kernel to include the driver has
> done the trick.  Except on the machine I'm trying to set up right now...
> 
> Here's my question: how do you know what IRQ and interupt to specify for
> your card?  The Net3-4 HOWTO tells me that my card's manufacturer
> probably sent me a DOS disk that lets me configure my card.  I don't
> have that.  The card I have is a good old 3COM 509.  3COM's site has no
> configuration utilities for the card that I could find either.
> 
> I'm actually trying to put *two* 509's in this machine, if that makes
> any difference (even just one card doesn't work right now, though).


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