Re: Question about use of PMAD-AA ethernet adapter on Decstation

[Karsten Merker <karsten@excalibur.cologne.de>]

On Mon, Oct 06, 2003 at 04:29:41PM -0400, Len Sorensen wrote:

> I haven't managed to get my add on ethernet card to work in Debian Linux
> yet on my Decstation 5000/133.  I was looking through the kernal patch
> for mips, and saw this code:
> 
> #if 0
>   /* We use this driver for the onboard LANCE only */
> 
>         /* Scan slots for PMAD-AA cards first. */
>  #ifdef CONFIG_TC
>         if (TURBOCHANNEL) {
> [snip]
>                }
>        }
> #endif
> #endif
> 
> This looks to me as if it purposely makes the PMAD-AA not even an option
> to use, although I was told at one point that supposedly it should work.

> Does anyone have an update on the status of the driver?

The code in declance.c does not work correctly with the PMAD-AA. The
driver assigned eth0 to the PMAD-AA even though it does not really
support this card and it assigned eth1 to the (working) onboard
lance. As it made no sense to have a non-working card as the primary
interface, I disabled the PMAD-AA detection in the piece of code
listed above.

The mipsel 2.4.19 kernel package version 2.4.19-0.020911.6 and newer
contains a (quite crude) patch which should make the PMAD-AA useable
besides the onboard interface. Could you please try that one and tell
me whether it works for you?

There had been plans to include proper PMAD-AA support in the
standard declance driver, but up to now nobody actually has managed
to do that.

Regards,
Karsten
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