Re: Debian on i486

["Cameron L. Spitzer" <cls@truffula.sj.ca.us>]

[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.

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