Admar Schoonen wrote:
Hi, On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 07:59:19PM +0200, Christian Euler wrote:Hi Geert,Is there anything special about PCI support on UltraSparc?Not as far I known. I think the original poster is encountering hardware defects. Hardware test to preform: * place a known to be working PCI (Network) card in the Ultra 5 * place the PCI USB card in known to be working PCI slot.I ripped the USB card off my wife's PC (where it was working fine). I also tried other cards on the Ultra, without success. The machine itself runs pretty stable, I used it for about 8 hours yesterday without any glitches. So I don't want to talk about a hardware problem yet. ;)There are various success and fail stories of putting USB PCI cards in Ultra 5's. I once heard that U5's only like PCI 2.1 cards and not 2.2 (see e.g. http://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/2007/12/msg00012.html). Don't know if it's true. You might try a different USB card. HTH Admar
My recollection of the previous discussion was that some cards, believed to be PCI 2.2, locked up a PCI-Based SPARC system (possibly an Ultra-5) without any detectable activity. It was surmised that the SPARC system was compatible with PCI 2.1 but not with 2.2.
Having recently had a very similar problem on some Compaq x86 systems with much-newer PCI USB cards fitted, i.e. the computer was either dead or booted a small number of times and then died, I believe that PCI compatibility might be a major issue.
However the OP (Christian) did have a system that ran, so it might in practice be the usual sort of driver problem rather than a fundamental incompatibility.
My advice would be to keep an eye on eBay looking for older/slower USB cards, i.e. /not/ 480Mbit/sec v2. I know it shouldn't happen but in my experience peripherals always work best with machines roughly comparable with what was current when they were designed and tested.
-- Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk [Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]