hi james, yes, the most commonly used pci drivers are the 3com vortex/boomerang, the dec tulip and the intel etherexpress pro 100. the problem is that there's a register on these cards, the general purpose register (CSR12) which are programmable by the vendor. they all do it a bit differently. it's a hard situation. as far as debian goes, i can understand your frustration. however, i'll tell you this much. i've used redhat, suse and debian extensively. when it comes to: updating your system recovering from a Really Bad Thing[tm] getting user support debian is orders of magnitude than redhat, and perhaps an order of magnitude better than suse. heck, look at all the support you're getting right now for free! :-) i see someone replied to your question about bin86, so i won't restate the answer. :-) good luck! pete On Sun 25 Feb 01, 6:40 PM, James K. Wiggs said: > > Peter, > > Thanks for the info. I find it sort of astonishing that there > are problems with the tulip driver. This has to be probably the > most commonly used driver other than the ne2k. I've been using > these NetGear cards in most of my boxes for about three years and > never had *any* problems with any previous kernel. The box I did > this install on was running 2.2.14 previously, and the card never > complained. > > Anyway, I unpacked the kernel source and did a "make xconfig" > and I find that, interestingly, the FA-310TX card has its own > button on the network drivers menu. I decided to compile it > right into the kernel rather than as a module. The only problem > now is that make is complaining that it can't find as86, even > though I selected the development packages when I did the > install. Looking through the stuff on the CD that I downloaded > and burned, I can't figure out which .deb package contains the > assembler. Do you happen to know? Can I just do an "apt-get > install as86" and expect it to work? > > I have to say that, overall, I've been thoroughly unimpressed > by the Debian distro. I was told that the installation would be > tough, but I *never* anticipated the two-day nightmare that this > has become. > > Thanks for your help, regardless. > > best, > Jim Wiggs > > > On Sun, 25 Feb 2001, Peter Jay Salzman wrote: > > > james, the tulip driver is problematic. > > > > we've had cards at our installfests that required the tulip.c driver from > > the 2.4.* kernels. > > > > can you ping the card's IP? > > what does /var/log/messages say? > > > > why don't you recompile the kernel and turn off Lite-On 82c168 PNIC. > > compile it as a module or something. that will stop the kernel from trying > > to configure the card at boot. > > > > pete > > > > On Sun 25 Feb 01, 2:33 PM, James K. Wiggs said: > > > > > > Folks, > > > > > > I'm finding it impossible to get networking functional on the > > > box I've just installed 2.2r2 on. This is not an exotic setup, and > > > I've successfully installed several other distros on it at one time > > > or another, but the Debian install has been a complete wash. > > > > > > Why does my NetGear FA-310TX refuse to work with this kernel? > > > I searched the archives of the mailing lists exhaustively, and I've > > > found no mention of this problem, but it clearly is not working on > > > my box. > > > > > > I've got an AMD K6-2 350 on an FIC board; the only cards in the > > > machine are a BT-950 SCSI card, the NetGear card, and an older SB > > > AWE32 card. The master disk on the primary controller is an ACER > > > 50X CD, and the master disk on the secondary controller is a CD-RW > > > drive, a Matsushita 8x4x32. The box works perfectly with RedHat > > > 6.0 and 6.2, and with Mandrake 7.0. The hard disk is an IBM 4.3 > > > GB FW-SCSI. > > > > > > The boot logs show that the kernel identifies the card as a > > > "Lite-On 82c168 PNIC" (???), and the interface gets configured > > > with the proper IP, netmask, etc, but any attempts to send any > > > data out over the wire fail. > > > > > > Any suggestions? > > > > > > best, > > > Jim Wiggs
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