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From: William O Ferry <WOFerry+@CMU.EDU>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc
Subject: Re: NetBSD has killed my SMC network card !!! Twice
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 16:42:34 -0500
Organization: Sophomore, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 68
Message-ID: <AlFo5_S00YUuBQYpgN@andrew.cmu.edu>
References: <314502FF.3450@niwa.cri.nz>
NNTP-Posting-Host: po8.andrew.cmu.edu
In-Reply-To: <314502FF.3450@niwa.cri.nz>
> I have (or had) an SMC8013T nework card
>
> I installed NetBSD 1.1 the other day from floppies and all seemed to go
> OK. I noticed it was not connecting to the network so I checked the
> network card settings to see if they were the right ones to work with
> NetBSD. I altered them to the correct settings for the card with
> ezsetup. upon boot up NetBSD proceeded to tell me that my IRQ was wrong
> the the network was not loaded. I rebooted and this time it didn't even
> find it. So I booted to DOS and ran the SMC configuration program
> ezsetup.exe which proceeded to tell me that I had no cards installed. I
> tried the card on another machine and still no luck. So I tried another
> card and exactly the same thing happened. HOW do I get my network cards
> back up and running !!!!!! Has NetBSD the ability to scramble my cards
> !!!!
I had the same thing happen to me when first installing NetBSD. A
friend of mine had it happen when trying to install OS2/Warp on his
machine (and his Warp doesn't even HAVE network support!! =) It would
seem that the probing for certain tape drives (and possibly other
things) involves writing to areas of memory around the base address 300.
If your SMC card is set to that address, it will mess up the card's
settings. Switching to a hard configuration shouldn't fix it, as it
manages to write the corrupted data to the card's NVRAM.
Here's the routine I was given, that fixed both my card and the card
messed up by Warp:
(Hopefully you know the card's 6 byte hardware address)
Assuming your card is still at base 300 (don't jumper it anywhere else yet),
0x308 - 0x30d contain the hardware address. 0x30e is a board type
identifier. 0x30f is a checksum for the other information. If the SMC
utilities don't see the correct checksum byte, they seem to
automatically assume it's not an SMC ethernet card at the port.
Using DOS "debug", check the values between 308 and 30f. For example,
to view the byte at 308, use the command "i 308". To write the byte 0F
to 308, use the command "o 308 0F".
Verify that the contents of 308 - 30d ARE your hardware address. I
don't know what the correct board type for your card is. For the two I
fixed, they were EtherCard PLUS Elite16T, and the identifier was 0x28.
Hopefully you have another (non-corrupt) card, or somebody else could
tell you what the correct identifier is, as at least for my friend and I
it was one of the bytes that had been changed by the probe.
Once you're sure all these bytes are correct, you get to calculate the
value for the 8th byte... =) The sum of all 8 bytes (mod 256) should be
0xFF. So add the first 7 bytes, and calculate what the 8th one should
be to get a sum (mod 256) of 0xFF.
Now you're ready to commit these settings to the NVRAM. To do this,
read the byte at 0x301. Add 0x80 to it, and write that value to 0x301.
Now write the original value back in. Now the settings are saved. The
SMC utilities should see the card, hopefully they will still show it's
the correct type of card... =)
BTW, be sure to move your card to somewhere other than 0x300... =)
Hope that helps, if you have any more questions feel free to email
me. Good luck!
Will Ferry
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William O Ferry <woferry@WarpDrive.COM> | finger: woferry@WarpDrive.COM
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