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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.erols.net!news.mathworks.com!uunet!in3.uu.net!nntp.earthlink.net!usenet From: Jason Fordham <jclf@interverse.com> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Kernel on Walnut Creek Disks... Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 11:48:14 -0800 Organization: Xenu Liberation Front Lines: 38 Message-ID: <3294B1FC.2694@interverse.com> References: <3290E8FE.7DA7@mail.csra.net> <32922CC8.53CC@interverse.com> <32948370.28C@mail.csra.net> Reply-To: jclf@interverse.com NNTP-Posting-Host: anwaya.earthlink.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0Gold (Win95; I) CC: escher@mail.csra.net, thomas@lkg.dec.com, stefani@lkg.dec.com Sam Brown wrote: > > (Assorted bits snipped for directness.) > > Jason Fordham wrote: > > I assume you're using the DEC DEFPA PCI chipset FDDI cards... very nice > > indeed, _if_ you have the right revision of the card. There are versions > > that can kill your box. Check with your vendor, or just suck it and see. > > I had four cards that were the wrong revision, and DEC were very good > > about exchanging them. I was duly impressed. > > Yike! SO what would the WRONG revision be? (most vendors, at least > the ones i know, are beyond ignorant when it comes to FreeBSD. What > would be the right question to ask?) > S. I've had a little correspondence with Larry Stefani <stefani@lkg.dec.com> since I posted. Not only do I no longer have access to the machine, the mail I sent at the time was... ah... misappropriated by my clients. I corresponded with Matt Thomas <thomas@lkg.dec.com>, who wrote the driver, and knows what the incompatibilities are. The machine I put together was a Gateway 2000 P-166 with 2 FDDI cards, an NEC chipset SCSI controller, and Gateway's Matrox Not-Quite-Millenium-MGA card in the PCI slots. Gateway's motherboard uses the Intel Triton chipset, and this is the source of the trouble. Once I'd added 'pseudo-device fddi', 'device dfa0' and 'device dfa1' to the config file, I found that soon after traffic started to go over the FDDI, the machine would lock up, with one card or two. IIRC, the boards I had were revision C, and D or later was what I needed - Matt and Larry, I'm sure, will be able to provide more details. I hope this helps. Well, in fact, I hope it's irrelevant ;-) Jason Fordham