Topic: 3com 509 Blues!

[Edward Richardson]

I'll try to be brief.

I'm trying to get a simple router working, but only have 3com ISA 509B NICS.

I have followed the advise in Randy Browns " ISA and Unsuported PCI NICs" thread, but to no avail.

My equipment consists of the following:

2 x 3com Etherlink III (ISA based 509B Combo).
1 P100.
1 Intel FX AT motherboard (Award BIOS).

I get 1 error on boot-up relating to the NIC (but it goes by so fast I can't read it), however the network part of the install reports as [OK].

When I try to manually start networking (/etc/rc.d/init.d/network), I get the message:

Delaying eth0....[FAILED].

Only the local interface shows when I run ifconfig.

IRQs and IO addresses are entered, with no conflicts!

I also get the dhcp demon (dhcpd) fail and ismod thread error relating to 3c509.0 error on shutdown.

I had this identical setup working on Red Hat Version 7 last week with network access,  so I don't think it is hardware related.

I know the problem relates to the kernel, but I'm relatively new to linux, and so kernel hacking is little out of my skill-set at the mo.

Does anybody have any suggestions, or should I just go out and buy a couple of PCI NICs? (Component prices are high here in the UK!)

Thanks for any help,

Eddy.

[Randy Brown]

Hi eddy,

  what driver are you using for your nic's? and are you sure that you have the correct io number?

I am farly certen that 3com has a dos utility that fits on a floppy and it will give you all of the correct settings.


hope this helps you.

ps in 4.1 they changed conf.modules to modules.conf

[Richard Bruce]

Eddy,

I tried this last week and it took me a while! What I ended up doing is following Randy's instructions but discovered one important point. Every time I tried to load the card with (in my case) options eth0  io=0x230 irq=10   I received an "invalid parameter io" error. The only parameter I could get to work was irq. With only the irq's in the options lines for the cards they initialised and worked perfectly (after a hard reboot). I have noticed with these nic's that after any change has been made to either the driver or the config of the card itself they require a hard reboot before they become active. 3com do a nice little DOS utility (3c5x9.exe I think) that is on their driver disk set that allows you to choose the IRQ and IO addresses. On the same set is another utility (PNPDISABL.BAT) that sets the card into "legacy" rather than "Plug 'n' Play" mode. Hopefully you'll find the above useful.

Richard

[Edward Richardson]

Thanks for the reply,

I am sure that I'm getting the correct settings (Using 3coms DOS Card ID and Config utils).  I'm only a newbie when it comes to Linux.  I've been involved with networking for the best part of 10 years.

I have been using the 3c509 driver supplied with the e-smith.  Are there any other versions and how would I install them.

However I notice in Richard Bruce's reply that he is entering his IRQ setting in his modules.conf (something that is not mentioned in the original primer).  I shall give this ago.  Also disabling the Plug and Play sounds like good idea.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Regards,

Eddy

[Randy Brown]

... yes i think that this is a must, the disabaling of Plug&Play....
you might want to disable it in your bios as well.