*BSD News Article 74727


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From: tedm@cpinc.com
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: PnP network cards?
Date: 26 Jul 1996 06:54:01 GMT
Organization: Symantec Corporation
Lines: 52
Message-ID: <4t9q29$ge5@symiserver2.symantec.com>
References: <4t0q6i$ahv@moon.igcom.net>
Reply-To: tedm%toybox@agora.rdrop.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.6.34.4
X-Newsreader: IBM NewsReader/2 v1.2

In <4t0q6i$ahv@moon.igcom.net>, dinosaur@terra.igcom.net (One Kosher Pickle) writes:
>I have a NE2000 compatible network card.  Sounds good so far, but it's
>Plug and Play (ugh).  It has absolutely NO dip switches.  I don't even
>know what exact IRQ it is because of this.  I get timeout messages when

If it is true PnP your screwed. ;-)  I'm assuming that it is a NE2000 _ISA_
clone.

The ISA bus was never designed for Plug and Pray.  What goes on with
Plug and Pray ISA cards (Like the popular SoundBlapper AWE32 PnP) is that
they tie all the IRQ's to the card, then the operating system is supposed to
sort out which IRQ goes to what and tell the card through some magic
incantation what IRQ it is supposed to use, the card then disables all the
other IRQ's.

This works OK when you have ONE ISA card in there, but when you have
multiple ones then you can get a mess, with no one knowing what IRQ is
supposed to go to who.

Sometimes (like with the SoundBlapper) they have a DOS utility that loads,
reads a file with the appropriate settings, and then programs the card and
then terminates.  This goes into Autoexec under DOS.

A lot of times network cards with no jumpers use a configuration program
that actually programs the appropriate IRQ into there.  Some of them also
can turn off the PnP feature and program the IRQ.  If your card is like this
you just need to obtain the utility.

Since PnP circuitry is expensive, if you have a nameless clone NE2000 made
in an asian country, I'd hazard a guess it is really not PnP, and needs a 
configuration utility to set the jumpers.

Keep in mind that there are now lots of ISA cards which are labeled PnP but
what their referring to is that the device driver for the card (at least the
supplied ones, anyway) will auto configure themselves to whatever the card
is set to without telling the driver through configuration or whatever where
the card is at.  I guess you could say this is lying.

Also, PCI cards are generally PnP, as there is actually a negotiation
mechanism on the PCI buss for determining where the card is at.  Also, a
sometimes you can override this (like in the Buslogic PCI cards) and tell the
PCI card where to configure itself.

My guess is your card is configured with a software program that saves the
jumper settings to the card's NVRAM.  If it isin't, you could try experimenting.
Most PnP cards have a default set of ports and interrupts that they use 
everytime the card is turned on, if yours is like this and you can figure out 
where it is set to you can simply rebuild the kernel.  (hopefully it doesen't
stomp on a useful interrupt like IRQ3)

Ted