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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!newsrelay.netins.net!news.pionet.net !root From: sonny@pionet.net (Dan Liston) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: ix0 passes probe but fails init Date: Wed, 20 Dec 1995 17:31:52 GMT Organization: Sonny's Garage ECS (605-232-3169) Lines: 49 Message-ID: <4b9hsn$a3h@ELWOOD.pionet.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: p48sc.pionet.net X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent v0.55 I have been a fan of FreeBSD and a student of Unix since I first found 2.0R on cdrom.com. I have stayed "current" to 2.1R. Admittedly all of these were loaded on the same machine, until friends in the office started seeing how cool unix can be. The problem comes in with more and more of us loading/running FreeBSD, I have found that I am only batting about .300 with the Intel EtherExpress16 network cards. It is always properly detected at the address and irq specified during the probe, and returns the proper ethernet address information, but ifconfig will always result in timeout errors on 5 out of 7 machines. These same network cards work fine in DOS with Novell or LANtastic, and have been used successfully in OS/2, workgroups, 95, and NT. One of the machines that successfully sees/uses the net gives an error message at boot time about "ixintr without being inited". Is there some patch file that has eluded me or since I got lucky with the first card, I can assume rgrimes or davidg had the same luck and have not worked on the code any further? BTW, the same thing happens with BNC and TP based cards. Has anyone else run into a similar problem? I am purely speculating at this point (I'm no programer), is FreeBSD defaulting to use the AUI port? If so, how can I tell BSD which port on the NIC to use? Every card I have tried has an AUI port, but the cards EEPROMs are all saved to use either the BNC or TP ports. Then again that would not explain why it has worked on 2 of the 7 cards. I have changed the card's memory address to everything from 0x200 to 0x360 and every Irq from 2 to 11. I have tried to force the 16 and 32 K memory blocks, and have tried all the UMBs. The machines that the cards worked in required nothing more that telling BSD the address/irq and everything was as smooth as silk. To get all 7 machines running, I have replaced the ix0 with either an ep0 or de0 (at the same address/irq), but it just does not make sense to me that the ix0 will not work (only in FreeBSD) in some machines. I have a LANtastic network that I run a DOS BBS on with sixteen Intel eexp16 10base2 cards that I want to convert to FreeBSD. I am running into the same ratio of success at home with these cards that I had at work, but I can't afford to go out and buy replacement cards for 2/3 of my network. Especially when the cards will/do work from other operating systems. Any and ALL comments or suggestions are welcome and appreciated. Dan Liston sonny@pionet.net sonny@gw2kbbs.com sonny@f4.n288.z1.fidonet.org