Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 07:24:47 -0700 (PDT) From: David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com> To: druid@eoe-magical.org, mycotropic@hotmail.com Cc: newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: it just goes on and on....... Message-ID: <199909171424.HAA07813@pau-amma.whistle.com> In-Reply-To: <37E18CD6.89C08086@eoe-magical.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>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
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199909171424.HAA07813>