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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.bugs:791 comp.os.386bsd.questions:2598 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!goanna!escargot!otto!davidb From: davidb@otto.bf.rmit.oz.au (David Burren [Athos]) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.bugs,comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: Strange behaviour of 3Com driver. Message-ID: <davidb.737982208@otto> Date: 21 May 93 11:03:28 GMT References: <1993May18.193708.10936@infodev.cam.ac.uk> Organization: Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Lines: 48 NNTP-Posting-Host: otto.bf.rmit.oz.au In <1993May18.193708.10936@infodev.cam.ac.uk> lrb1000@cus.cam.ac.uk (Lewis Brown) writes: >The 3Com driver in 386BSD 0.1 + pk 0.2.3 claims my 16-bit >twisted-pair 3C503 card has shared memory errors. I know >this is not the case, because if I change the driver so >that it continues anyway when it sees memory errors, the >network works fine _all_the_time_, even when the driver >barfs. I've tried several combinations of shared memory >and I/O addresses, to no avail... >Any ideas, anybody? Do you have a VGA card? What model? I had similar problems at one point with a machine such as the following, running NetBSD: 33 MHz Bull 386DX (a 25 MHz chipset with a 66MHz crystal - blech) 4 MB RAM Multi-I/O & IDE card, 1.44 floppy & 40MB IDE 3c503 Ethernet Trident 8900 VGA The machine was basically built as an experiment in an office environment where these machines had more compatibility problems (hardware and software) than any other PC, and thus some almost-complete machines were in the spare-parts pile. The 503 reported shared-memory errors after a cold boot, but worked after a warm boot. Well, most of the time, anyway. The local PC manager attacked the machine with all sorts of DOS diagnostic programs, but no obvious configuration errors could be found. Several RAM, I/O, and IRQ combinations were tried, to no avail. Another 503 card was tried. Same. But if the VGA card was replaced by an EGA, the problems went away. The problem was left alone when it was found that an NE2000 (freed up when a NetWare fileserver was retired) worked correctly with the VGA card. I did take in one of my own WD cards as an experiment, and it also worked with the VGA card. One of the people in the office brought in his 386DX40 machine from home to have NetBSD loaded onto it and it also refused to work with a 503 card (the installations were done via NFS). Replacing his Trident 8800 VGA with the EGA card for the installation "solved" the problem. Sorry, I have no solution for you, but this may correlate with some other experiences. Has anyone successfully used a 3c503/Trident combination? - David B.