*BSD News Article 34090


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From: hpeyerl@sidney.novatel.ca (Herb Peyerl)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.os.386bsd.misc
Subject: Re: BT445C == No FreeBSD???
Followup-To: comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.os.386bsd.misc
Date: 10 Aug 1994 12:45:55 GMT
Organization: NovAtel Communications Ltd.
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References: <31vk03$mdk@tekgen.bv.tek.com> <31vs36$qgv@tekgen.bv.tek.com> <Cu4w68.99B@tfs.com> <DERAADT.94Aug6165915@newt.fsa.ca> <Cu6KIp.6B8@tfs.com>
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Julian Elischer (julian@tfs.com) wrote:
: 386bsd used to do this with the SCSI drivers, but it got broken in patchlevel
: 2.4 and in FreeBSD1.x
: (the drivers would reconfigure themselves to match the hardware)

I believe it to be invalid to reconfigure the driver to match the hardware.

While I was writing the if_ep driver, I looked at another driver that
reconfigured itself according to the first 3c509 it found.  The problem
with this is that there was no guarantee which 3c509 you would get
upon bootup. You were "fairly sure" but not guaranteed. The last
thing I want as a user is to have the card that I normally associate
with "ep1" to suddenly show up as "ep0" on some boots requiring me to 
change my ifconfig's based on my recollection of the MAC addr's during
boot...

For example: my config file says:

device ep0 at isa? port 0x350 net irq 7 vector epintr
device ep1 at isa? port ? net irq ? vector epintr

because I want to be sure that the card at 0x350,7 becomes ep0.  I know
that I only have one additional 3c509 in the machine so I don't care 
what its config is.

Note; there's a difference between a driver that reconfigures itself 
according to the card and a driver that doesn't care what card's configuration
is...

But now I'm off topic.

--
hpeyerl@novatel.ca                           |  NovAtel Communications Ltd.
hpeyerl@fsa.ca                               | <nothing I say matters anyway>
 "A sucking chest wound is nature's way of telling you to slow down."