Re: PXE, Etherboot, and Frustration

[Benjamin Story <bstory@bullets.net>]

I figured I probably had a "problem child" chip since it never really
liked Windows.  To make matters worse, Donald Becker says that this
chip was mostly miswired in the Dells which makes them not behave as
they should.  Guess it's time to go back to rom-o-matic and start
creating one of every flavor of 3c59x and see if any work.  

<satire>
Dell Guy: We need some cheap network cards for our new computers.
Supply Guy: Ok

<in an alley>
Supply Guy: Got the merchandise?
Shady Guy: Yup, got a whole box full.
Supply Guy: Good, here's your $50.

<in 3com's corporate board room>
CEO: Did we dispose of those bad chips?
Underling: Yeah we got some panhandler to take them.  He gave us $10
to use them as key chains or something.

</satire>
On Sat, Mar 29, 2003 at 05:08:49AM +0000, mike808@users.sourceforge.net wrote:
> > it is a 3C905 10/100 Mbps (integrated 3C916B chip).
> 
> Ahh. Yup. That's the one.
> I found one post on the Linux Kernel mailing list in 11/2001 by Ian Chilton 
> looking for drivers. Never heard back from him on the list about a resolution.
> 
> I found a thread on the goofy chicken-sacrificing ritual you must go
> through to get this sucker to work on the Dell Lattitude CDock (which
> is what we hat *lots* (100s) of at a previous client, and why we wanted 
> support from our Linux vendor to resolve before choosing a distro vendor).
> 
> And that's running a MS OS!
> 
> I also recalled going to get drivers from Sclyd's site (per the recommendation
> from the 3Com site for 3c905 drivers).
> 
> The good stuff is here:
> http://www.scyld.com/network/updates.html
> 
> This is *THE* site you want to read carefully over:
> http://www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html
> 
> It looks like you need to be using the 3c59x driver.
> The lastest version is here:
> 
> ftp://ftp.scyld.com/pub/network/test/3c59x.c
> 
> It looks like it was last touched December 2002, so if it doesn't
> work, see if you can maybe send one of those beasts to Donald Becker
> for him to play with. Folks tend to like to actually have the device
> they're writing a driver for. Giving him one may make him interested
> in solving the problem if you aren't or can't.
> 
> This will also solve this problem for all those Lattitude Docks out there
> too.
> 
> >From their site:
> Supported boards - PCI boards
> The supported models are the PCI EtherLink III 3c590 "Vortex" series, (3c590 and
> 3c595), the PCI EtherLink XL "Boomerang" series (3c900 and 3c905), the 3c905B
> "Cyclone" series, and the 3c905C "Tornado" series. 
> 
> Since your chip is the 3c916B, I'm guessing it's in the "Cyclone" series.
> 
> The 3Com sources are here:
> http://support.3com.com/infodeli/tools/nic/linuxdownload.htm
> 
> I also found some references to this card being supported in RH6.2.
> 
> This has some detail on the 3com cards in general.
> http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Ethernet-HOWTO-4.html#ss4.1
> 
> Mike808/
> 
> ---------------------------------------------
> http://www.valuenet.net
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
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Benjamin Story
 
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