Re: Problems with DEC Etherworks 3

[Marty Connor <mdc@thinguin.org>]

On 3/2/2000 1:24 AM Ken Yap ken@nlc.net.au wrote:
>The likelihood becomes non-zero if someone volunteers (remember Etherboot
>is all volunteer written free software, you get what you pay for). If you
>would like some tips on how to write a driver, email me. It's not that
>difficult if you understand hardware concepts, but you have to be patient
>with your test rig. Also you need access to the chip's programming manual.

It appears there is a Linux driver (see 
/usr/src/linux/drivers/net/de4x5.c) for this card, so writing an 
Etherboot driver would be easier than having to decode things from 
scratch.

The economics of writing such a driver are made less attractive, however, 
because of the low cost of clone and used Ethernet cards.

I routinely pick up 10BASE-T NE2000 ISA cards for 1 or 2$ US.  I imagine 
even new ISA cards are very affordable. One can purchase LNE100TX PCI 
(tulip clone) Cards (in quantity) for $15US/card or less, I imagine in 
the Pacific rim.

The newer PCI cards are actually easier to write drivers for, because the 
card is smarter about media-selection and speed auto-negotiation.

As someone who has spent hundreds of hours learning to debug and write 
Etherboot driver code, I can say that with the cost of new cards being as 
low as it is removes much of the incentive for writing drivers for older 
cards.  That being said, it is possible (given time and equipment to test 
on) that I or someone else will write a driver, just for the hack value, 
or as a contribution to the community.

Let's look at the situation where someone has 100 workstations with old 
Ethernet cards in them.  If it is ISA, they could probably buy 100 NE2000 
clone cards used for <$500US.  What's sadly humorous is that I have 
donated cards I bought for 1$ to people after adding a 3$ EPROM to them.

Even at 15$US/card, a cheap PCI clone card, quantity 100, is 1500$US, and 
I suspect if you were to use RTL8139 based cards, you could do it for a 
lot less at that quantity, if you negotiated at all.

Now, the going rate for a device driver is certainly more than 1500$ (the 
Linux Consultant HOWTO suggests $2500 and up) because anyone capable of 
writing and debugging the driver (especially an open source driver) is 
probably able to make much more spending the time it would take to write 
the driver doing something else.  (see /usr/doc/HOWTO/Consultants-HOWTO 
for a list of consultants and sample prices).

Now, if Linux drivers could be trivially ported to Etherboot (the NILO 
project http://www.nilo.org is attempting to make this possible), then 
driver writing would not be such an effort. For the moment, however, it 
still requires time, patience, testing, and skill to produce a reliable 
driver.

I don't mean for this to be a discouraging message, but I think it is 
important to put some practical numbers to the discussion.  

All this being said, the time I have spent learning and contributing to 
Etherboot has been well worth the effort.  I encourage anyone who is 
interested in understanding computers more to do the same.  Driver 
writing is like poetry; each word carries meaning, and it is an efficient 
use of language.  I find satisfaction in knowing that a driver I wrote or 
debugged is helping people who I may never meet.

So there's the long answer.  The short answer is that if I happen across 
a board and have time, I may try to make it work.

Regards,

Marty

---
   Name: Martin D. Connor
US Mail: Entity Cyber, Inc.; P.O. Box 391827; Cambridge, MA 02139; USA
  Voice: (617) 491-6935, Fax: (617) 491-7046 
  Email: mdc@thinguin.org
    Web: http://www.thinguin.org/


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