Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 15:09:36 -0600 (MDT) From: Nate Williams <nate@mt.sri.com> To: Chris Timmons <skynyrd@opus.cts.cwu.edu> Cc: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Versa 6030X, 3c589c adventures Message-ID: <199610072109.PAA29312@rocky.mt.sri.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.3.95.961007125731.27986A-100000@opus.cts.cwu.edu> References: <Pine.BSI.3.95.961007125731.27986A-100000@opus.cts.cwu.edu>
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> > My thanks to Nate Williams, Tatsumi Hosokowa, the nomads group, bootasia, > and the freebsd cast of k's for all of their efforts to make freebsd > viable on notebook computers. Your welcome. > I've been working with a brand new NEC 6030X (and a 3com 3c589c ethernet > adapter) *NICE* box. Wish I had one. :) > > The machine has a P133, 1.4G IDE disk, 16MB RAM, 1024x768 XGA color and a > versa-bay which can accept a floppy, cd, hd or battery. Also there is a > built-in 28.8 fax modem which appears on cuaa1 (COM2). PhoenixNoteBIOS > 4.0 is present on the machine. I'd like to know if the built-in modem is recognized by FreeBSD. > I chose W95 (vs wfw 311) as my factory OS. Unfortunately, if there is an > easy way to repartition the disk so to leave room for freebsd, I missed > it. NEC supplies a bootable CD from which you can reinstall w95, but it > is non-interactive and takes the entire disk each time. I wound up going > into BIOS and reducing the # of cylinders for the disk to the number that > I wanted for w95. I was able to install from the NEC restore CD, restore > the bios geometry, boot w95 from floppy and 'sys c:'. This worked, and I > was able to then do the kind of normal partitioning that one does in the > freebsd installation procedure. NEC phone support disavows any > repartitioning and multiple os environments, be they freebsd or otherwise. Yuck! > I have had mixed success with the 3c589c. Per Nate Williams' advice in > the archives, I attempted to make 3com's setup programs run from DOS to > tell me the card's IRQ, IO port address, etc. I could not find any > combination of 'real' dos floppy or W95 'dos mode' environments to make > these programs run. Are you running the program '3C589CFG.EXE'? If you go through the normal 'setup' program it expects card services to be loaded. Also, you *must* do this from DOS, and *NOT* a DOS session. If you boot from a DOS floppy and run '3C589CFG.EXE' it will complain about card services not running, and then it should try to find the card w/out card services. At least it does on the 3 cards I have access to using a DOS 6.22 boot floppy. > Usually the failure is that 'no 3com adapters located > on this system.' Ditto on a colleague's toshiba 486 laptop. However, w95 > finds the card and drives it without any problem. It uses W95 'card services'. > My research indicates I > need 'card services' for DOS, but it doesn't appear that they come with > the laptop. 3com says that you can still run diagnostics without 'card > services' but I couldn't get past the 'can't find adapter' problems, in > either slot. Card services aren't needed if you are running W95. And, you don't want them anyway on other OS's. > I did read the settings that w95 reported and fed them into a /kernel -c > boot from the 2.2-960801-SNAP boot floppy after disabling ze0. It seems > to find zp0 but then I do not see that interface in the menu for network > interfaces later on in the install. I am guessing that the settings I see > in w95 are incomplete or only in effect when w95 has the card. The W95 values are determined at run-time (you can configure the card to whatever you want using 'Card Services', but the zp driver doesn't know how to do that. > Using the bootasia floppy, I was able to get an installation going using > the ep0 driver, but after several minutes, barely into the bindist (after > seeing local transfer rates of 1.6KB max!) everything hangs. The Nomad boot floppy uses the FreeBSD version of 'Card Services', and can thus set the card to whatever it needs. The lockups may be due to a driver bug that Michael Butler <imb@scgt.oz.au> is working on. I don't see it on my boxes, but they might not be fast enough to trigger the race condition. > Watching > with tcpdump, the laptop fails to ack a data packet and its all over. > Further retries from the remote ftpd go un-acked. I can however ^C out of > the install and do see the FTP ABORT message on the debug console. > Any suggestions for a different card that might work better? The 389c has > part number 16-0020-00 REV B. It's a good card, and the zp driver probably works better. > NEXT > > I think I am probably going to do a ppp installation of 2.1.5-R and see if > Xfree86-3.1.2G will work with the "Chips & Technologies 65550 PCI" adapter > that W95 reports. Newer versions recognize the chip, but they can't synchronize the LCD very well. If you shut/open the case (which toggles power) it should work fine, but I don't know about 1024x768 support. I've got a XF86Config file for 800x600 that works well with the above constraints. Nate
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