Re: Ethernet Card Setup
On Wed, Aug 22, 2001 at 09:34:43AM -0400, Hall Stevenson wrote:
> > I am new to Debian, and am having difficulty
> > setting up my Network Card.
> >
> > I currently have a 3Com 3C905-TX PCI
> > 10/100 network card.
> >
> > It is apparently supported in the kernel distributed
> > with the current Potato release. I have read that it
> > should be auto-detected.
> >
> > It doesn't seem to be detected and set up in the
> > Debian Install.
> >
> > How do I go about configuring it?
>
> Try disabling the "Plug-n-Play Operating System" setting in
> your BIOS, if you have one. It may be worded differently, but
> you should get the idea...
>
> I *think* (and I'd like to know the answer for sure in case
> anyone knows) that the kernel drivers for various pieces of
> hardware only looks at 'x' number of settings, i.e. IRQ and IO
> address. They're considered 'standard' settings for that
> particular device. If you have 'PnP O/S' setting enabled in
> your BIOS, it doesn't assign the settings, but instead, lets
> the operating system do it.
I recently fought with a similar problem while trying to get the NIC
of my new notebook working (an ASUS L8400K with onboard RTL8139 chip).
I'm not entirely sure whether this has much to do with the original
problem -- but anyway, just for the record:
The card was being detected and I could load the appropriate driver
module. But when trying an ifup or ifconfig, I always got a
"SIOCSFFLAGS: Resource temporarily unavailable".
A google search provided converging evidence that this has to do with
an IRQ conflict, which made me take a closer look at the messages
being output while the card was being detected. There I saw, that the
PCI BIOS had assigned IRQ 0 (!) to the NIC -- no surprise there were
conflicts...
Further googling revealed that this is a M$-made PnP issue, so I looked
for a way to disable PnP in the BIOS. Unfortunately, it took me while
to realise that this ridiculous "Win98/W2K" vs. "Other" OS option in
the Phoenix-BIOS (which I had not taken seriously before) really meant:
"PnP enabled" vs. "PnP disabled"...
Setting it to "Other" immediately solved the problem.
To quote one of the NIC driver gurus, Donald Becker:
"The PnP OS problem occurs because Microsoft has convinced BIOS
makers to modify their PCI device configuration from the previous
rational standard, to one that works well only with Microsoft
operating systems. Where previously the BIOS allocated resources for
and enabled the PCI device by default, it now does so only for boot
devices and audio devices. (Why are audio devices specifically an
exception? Because MS-Windows can't handle the resource allocation
for them!)
The solution is to either update to the latest driver, (the drivers
are being re-worked to enable the devices) or to disable the "PnP OS"
setting in the machine's BIOS setup.
The reason Microsoft had to have this change implemented for them was
that MS-Windows still handles some devices with "real-mode" drivers,
and this change makes it easier to mix real-mode and protected-mode
device drivers. This is an excellent example of Microsoft using its
dominant position in the software industry force a technical change
that is detrimental to other operating systems."
(Donald Becker, http://scyld.com/expert/modules.html )
Sheesh!
--
Erdmut Pfeifer
science+computing ag
-- Bugs come in through open windows. Keep Windows shut! --
Reply to: