Re: Debian on i486

[Bill Smith <bill@rakupottery.org.uk>]

Cameron L. Spitzer wrote:
> [This message has also been posted to linux.debian.user.]
> In article <6G90m-1yo-7@gated-at.bofh.it>, Leonid Grinberg wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I have obtained the proper module for the 2.4 kernel and my ethernet
> > card (3c509), but modprobing it results in
> >
> > insmod: Unresolved symbol isapnp_find_dev_Rdae0a386
> >
> > Google does not find any pages with that symbol. Any ideas?
>
>
> My guess is you're trying to use a 3c509.o that was made with
> isa-pnp.o or isapnp.o, and those have to be loaded first,
> and they're missing.  If you're using modprobe and it
> can't resolve that by loading isapnp, you're missing something,
> or you're trying to use modules from two different kernels.
>
> As I dimly recall, 3c509.o can load all by itself in a kernel
> made without ISA Plug and Play.  But if you make your kernel with
> PnP, 3c509 needs it.  I never did understand that part of that
> driver.
>
> Unlike most ISA cards, 3C509 doesn't have a fixed I/O address.
> The driver kind of feels around for it at load time.  When
> I was using 3C509s I compiled it into bzImage so they would do
> that early in the boot time and not need to get modprobed with
> other activity going on.  Same with ISA Pnp.

Actually you can get a little utility (or could) from the 3com website
called 3c5x9.exe that you can run from a freedos or dr-dos floppy
to set the card up to the IO address and interrupt that you want it
to use, and disable the pnp function.
I always use this if have any of these cards, which have really lasted
the course.


> As I already said, you're gonna want to make a kernel just for
> that machine.  The stock Debian kernels are too fat and you
> don't have memory to waste.  Skip the whole initrd thing,
> it'll boot faster.
>
>
>
> Cameron


--
Bill