*BSD News Article 63757


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From: jmeyers@nostromo.wright.edu (John Meyers)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc
Subject: Re: NetBSD has killed my SMC network card !!! Twice
Date: 16 Mar 1996 04:23:43 GMT
Organization: Wright State University
Lines: 54
Message-ID: <4idfof$8e3@mercury.wright.edu>
References: <314502FF.3450@niwa.cri.nz> <4i7gc2$9c5@trumpet.uni-mannheim.de>
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In article <4i7gc2$9c5@trumpet.uni-mannheim.de>, 
andrew@wipux2.wifo.uni-mannheim.de says...
>
>In article <314502FF.3450@niwa.cri.nz>,
>Andy Robertson  <a.robertson@niwa.cri.nz> wrote:
>>Help,
>>
>>I have (or had) an SMC8013T nework card
>>
>>back up and running !!!!!!  Has NetBSD the ability to scramble my cards 
>>!!!!
>>
>>The cards will not work for a dos machine now and since the configration 
>> is stuffed I can't use them!!!!  Its really pissing me off !!!!
>>a.robertson@niwa.cri.nz
>
>I've seen this happen when running 'ezstart' (for newer smc-cards)
>on old cards which should have used 'ezsetup'. I've also heard
>of it happening on running NetBSD with certain configurations,
>though it never happened to me. It was a problem with the wt driver
>and the le driver clobbering the nvram.

 I've was recently installing NetBSD v1.1 on a system with the SMC
 Ether Elite? combo and experienced the same problem.  This particular
 board has three jumper options for two different IRQ settings or to
 be software selectable.  I had the board's jumper set to IRQ 10 with 
 memory address CC00.  Every time I brought the system up using the
 Adaptec based install kernel, the kernel would complain that the board
 was configured at IRQ 9 != IRQ 10 (which is actually hard coded in the
 kernel config).

 Using the SMC configuration utility to check the boards settings from
 dos, I found that the IRQ was actually set to IRQ 2.  It was actually
 pretty funny, as each time I reset the boards configuration and brought
 NetBSD back up with the install kernel, it would clobber the settings
 again, even with the board jumpered to a fixed IRQ.  After building 
 a new kernel with a minimal set of device configurations (e.g. remove
 any devices from the kernel config that you don't actually have), the
 the kernel was able to correctly initialize the SMC board. 

 So it appears that even if you have the board jumpered to a fixed IRQ
 and memory address, that something is overwriting it via software at 
 boot time.  In terms of the previous poster's problem, I would imagine 
 that it's possible the board's IRQ setting was set to a value which may 
 be conflicting with a common IRQ setting.   

 I think this should definitely be included in the FAQ at some point, 
 given the number of SMC cards out there.

 John Meyers
 Systems Programmer
 Wright State University
 E-Mail: jmeyers@nostromo.wright.edu