Re: Asante ethernet card
Hi,
> Do anyone know if the linux m68k kernel will support Asante 10baseT
> NUBUS/LC-PDS ethernet cards in future? I run Debian on a LCII with such a
As soon as someone with such hardware writes the necessary code and submits
a patch (to Dave Kilzer ddkilzer@earthlink.net or myself). Both Dave and
I can't possibly write code for all the esoteric hardware out there without
having access to the hardware, so those with the hardware (and the main
interest in the driver) will have to do it.
The first step should be to modify the Nubus code and try to probe the
card as a Nubus card even though it's PDS. If that works, the existing
ethernet driver will pick up the card and look for the 8390 chip. If that
fails (I'm almost sure it will), either there is no such chip (your card
uses a different ethernet chip), or it uses yet another register mapping.
In the latter case, just add a new case for your card (identified by the
DrHW and DrSW parameters) and play with the mappings. Easy.
Otherwise, figure out what ethernet controller your card uses (you can try
asking Asante support, but they are known to be as uptight as Apple, and
usually refuse to give out specs), and look for an existing Linux driver
using the same chipset. If there's no driver for your chipset yet,
get the datasheet and write one from scratch. If you are experienced in
MacOS hacking, reverse engineering the Asante driver may help.
Worst case (card not recognized as 'Nubus card'): you have to write your own
probe code to look for the chip, RAM etc. and to distinguish that card from
other PDS cards.
Alternative route: check if NetBSD/OpenBSD supports your configuration, and
analyze the BSD source to figure out how it is detected, what chipset it
uses etc.
Moral: Life sucks if you're stuck with Macs, and especially Apple's attitude
about keeping a competitive edge by refusing to document their outdated
hardware.
> net card, but linux doesn't recognise it. :( Can I compile my onw kernel
> til support the net card?
You sure can compile your own kernel. In fact, you would need to compile
quite a lot of kernels to develop a driver. Ask on the Mac mailing list
(linux-mac68k@baltimore.wwaves.com) for details and other LC owner's
experiences.
Michael
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