Re: Sort of offtopic question about 3c905c and windows.

[Marty Connor <mdc@thinguin.org>]

On 1/19/2000 3:29 PM robertt@stargate.cs.swau.edu Robert Thompson wrote:
>I just installed a bunch of 905C netcards in a lab. They work beautifully
>under linux and etherboot-floppy.  I thought happy thoughts and updated
>all the machines. Of course, disaster then struck.

How like life.  But don't worry, we shall yet prevail :-)

>Problem 1: I discovered that I can't boot through the bootprom. Neither 
>3com's default prom, nor an etherboot-image I cromutil-wrote* to the card 
>works. I had already discovered what BIOS options were needed when I was 
>using my lone 3c905B-TXM: I've set the motherboard to boot to the network 
>device first, and turned off PnP.

It's probably the PCI signature of the image.  Edit your src-32/Config 
file, and go to about line 123:

# Newer 90xC revision:
#   0x9200 : 10/100 TPO (3C905C-TXM)
90X_SIGNATURE=0x9200

Your 90X_SIGNATURE is probably 0x9055.  It needs to be 0x9200 for the 
3C905C.  We should document this better.  Etherboot 4.4.2 is going to 
have a better system for specifying this, but what you'll find is that 
floppy drivers will boot any member of the family they are designed for, 
but the image you burn into a ROM must have the proper PCI signature 
pair.  In the case of 3C90x cards, there are, as you can see in the 
Config file a large number of them.  Sorry I didn't make this clearer in 
my posts.  ntulip.c for example creates 4 seperate .rom/.lzrom files, 
which are identical except for their PCI signatures.

>Problem 2: I downloaded the simple driver from 3com, and installed it
>under Windows 95B. The machine finds the card, installs the driver, etc,
>all normally. It makes you reboot, of course. After reboot, the network
>should work. It doesn't. Windows thinks everything's working, you can
>attempt to ping, and it thinks it's sending pings. A tcpdump shows _NO_
>traffic from this machine. NOTE: This machine can network _fine_ under
>etherboot and linux-2.2.14  ...

Did you happen to change the PCI _slot_ the card was in?  Windows gets 
really silly about that.  Go to the SYSTEM Control Panel in Windows, and 
go into the Device Manager, and DELETE the card from your system.  Then 
reboot, and let Windows re-install the driver for the card.  I have seen 
this behavior when I change the slot of a PCI card under Windows.  
Sometimes you just have to do this deletion and re-discovery/installation 
ritual for no discernable reason. Primitive, that Windows :-)

>I was hoping someone would recognise this problem, and give me hints for
>correcting things. I'd be quite happy indeed to discover it's just some
>stupidity on my part...

Don't worry, you're experiencing common problems.  Frustrating, I know.

>Anyway, sorry for the offtopic post.

Not at all.  Someone perusing the archives will benefit from all these 
public posts.  You do us all a service by allowing us to debug in public.

>*I updated this utility to allow me to verify checksums.

Excellent!  Please send Ken or myself the changes.  Your work is much 
appreciated.

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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