Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 13:23:56 +1000 From: "Don Hansford" <donh@halenet.com.au> Cc: <newbies@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: it just goes on and on....... Message-ID: <00db01bf00bc$14a25da0$7b2137cb@igor> References: <199909171424.HAA07813@pau-amma.whistle.com>
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David
Thanx for restoring my faith!
Regards
Igor
Double your drive space - delete Windows!
----- Original Message -----
From: David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com>
To: <druid@eoe-magical.org>; <mycotropic@hotmail.com>
Cc: <newbies@FreeBSD.ORG>
Sent: Saturday, September 18, 1999 12:24 AM
Subject: Re: it just goes on and on.......
> >Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 17:35:34 -0700
> >From: Donald <druid@eoe-magical.org>
>
> >gezzzz I installed Freebsd on my machine after running
> >BSD/OS 3.0 for a few years and the install was real easy.
>
> :-}
>
> >First 3com in not a good choice for Freebsd, to many things
> >to hassel with, PNP, interupts and so on. What you need is a real
> >simple non-pnp ISA slot NIC card like SMC.
>
> As to the first point... well, from what I've seen, the basic issue is
> that 3Com, in a practice which I understand is not all that uncommon
> among PC hardware vendors, has a tendency to change things without doing
> a very good job of notifying folks who might care. After all, as long
> as they are supplying the drivers for the Microsoft platforms, who else
> needs to know? So I agree with the conclusion that 3Com isn't ideal,
> but (as you'll see below) I'd recommend PCI if you can swing it.
>
> As a case in point (re: 3Com), it's my recollection that the 3C905
Ethernet
> NIC had both PIO (programmed I/O) and DMA (direct memory access) methods
> of moving data between the CPU and the NIC. Well, 3Com apparently decided
> to make a slight modification; the result was the 3C905B. The salient
> modification as far as the drivers were concerned was that with the
3C905B,
> DMA is the only way to move data between the system and the NIC.
>
> Since the (old) driver for FreeBSD was based on code for an older NIC
> (that only used PIO), the 3C905B (first) wasn't recognized, and then
> wouldn't work. And the folks who sell these things retail are not
> always the most clueful around. (A 3C905B *must* be "better than" a
> 3C905, right? It's newer.... Lesson: the latest & greatest is *not*
> always optimal.)
>
> (Bill Paul, at Columbia University, came to the rescue -- again. Wrote
> a new driver that used DMA that could be used for all the 3C9x5* cards.
> BTW, he posts from time to time in -current, asking for volunteers to
> test new drivers he's written. Merely reading some of those posts can
> be rather educational: it provides a hint as to what goes on "under the
> covers". Just make very sure that if you ever need to ask folks for
> help -- especially Bill -- that you provide all of the necessary
> information. His previous posts (in the archives) tend to spell out
> rather explicitly just what kind of information he neds to diagnose a
> problem.)
>
> >You should have installed DOS first,
>
> That depends a great deal on one's background. The FreeBSD boxes I
> administer, both here and at home, run only FreeBSD. (The one I built
> for my wife never had any Microsoft software on it.) That may well be
> appropriate advice for the specific individual, but I encourage others
> to take advice specific to one person's circumstances "with a grain of
> salt" before applying that advice to their own circumstances.
>
> >got you nic cards working,
> >disabled pnp, and had the machine all partitioned first.
> >Sound card, video card and so forth.
>
> And if you use a PCI NIC, you don't need to deal with it all that much;
> they just Do The Right Thing ("DTRT") -- thanks to the efforts of folks
> like Bill Paul. I picked up a couple of NetGear 10/100 PCI NICs for $20
> each a couple of months ago; they seem to work just fine (though the net
> where they are is 10 Mb/sec only).
>
> Cheers,
> david
> --
> David Wolfskill dhw@whistle.com UNIX System Administrator
> voice: (650) 577-7158 pager: (888) 347-0197 FAX: (650) 372-5915
>
>
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