vit herman

Hello everybody

Are there any drivers for 3c509 (3com Etherlink III) available for
minix? I remember somebody talking about it on irc but it's more than a
year ago. If there aren't any, how hard would it be to write one? Which
driver should I take as an example?

BTW, are there any docs about minix kernel internals available (beside
the minix book, which is not an option for me, because it's almost
impossible to obtain it here)? I know that everything is in the sources,
but I remember the hell I got through when I was making some changes
into the minix keyboard driver. Only mad would go through again without
a map ((

Vitek
dragon@penguin.cz

alvin beach

There is a 3c509 driver for the current source of Minix-vmd (unofficially
2.0.0). You can see it at http://www.minix-vmd.org

It would be a fun project to port the Minix-vmd driver to Minix.

Your best bet is to order the book over the internet. You can always post
your questions in this group. Also, check out
http://groups.google.ca/groups?q=comp.os.minix You can search the
group...very valuable resource!


--
Alvn Beach
Email: alvinbeach@hotmail.com
Website: http://users.eastlink.ca/~alvinbeach

vit herman

Will have a look at it.

It would be fun indeed but I have very little experience with it so it
will be a really hard work for me.

Don't you think I haven't thought about ordering it online!!! But having
no credit card and being under 18 make it harder. I hope my boss will be
able to get it (I have a job in a bookshop beside the school to earn
some extra money, I remember her saying something about this topic). But
it's expensive hell a lot for me!!

Vitek

lcapitulino

Hi Alvin,


This driver is not in 2.0.4 ?

If yes, a backport should be more easy.

-- Luiz Fernando N. Capitulino

giovanni falzoni

The driver in Minix-vmd is a rework of the driver I wrote and should
work without changes in Minix. I'm been using it on my old 286
with Minix 2.0.2 (16bits)

Ciao
Giovanni

--
Giovanni Falzoni | gfalzoni@inwind.it
Windows e` come il condizionatore. Se apri le finestre non funziona!
Registered Linux user #337974 < http://counter.li.org/ >

vit herman

Is network task unchanged in 2.0.4 (eg. not changed the way it changed
in 2.0.2???) I'll try anyway but the more info I have the bigger is the
chance I'll be successful.

BTW, some two cards I've got here are behaving very strange. One is SMC
8003EP (checked with SMC EzStart software) but Minix (tested with 2.0.3)
identifies it as a 8013 and I think this is the reason of "strange
length packet" problems I have with it. It works well with NetBSD, Linux
and NCSA telnet with packet driver in DOS.

The second one is SMC 8013EWC (which I got two weeks ago hoping it will
work in Minix!!!!) which should be working (tested with NCSA telnet
only, though). But I get "strange length packet" error again!!! I
remember this has something to do with RAM of the NIC but I tried
0x2000, 0x4000 and 0x8000 with both cards and no success at all!!

So my question is: Do I have any chance of getting these cards to work
with minix? The first problem (8 bit card treated as 16 bit) should be
corrected just by forcing the driver into 8bit mode (I found the related
piece of code already), or am I wrong?? But I've got no idea about the
second one.

Thanks a lot for any informations
Vitek

philip

'strange length packet' usually means that the driver tries to use more
memory than actually present. The file wdeth.c contains an 'if (!debug)',
maybe you can compile a kernel with that part replaced by 'if (0)' and
post the debug output.

--
Everyone I've met who had any experience with the phenomenon have confirmed my
opinion that if a Ph.D. in computer science knows anything at all about
computers, it's probably pretty much an accident. -- J.D. Baldwin, in asr

vit herman

As I wrote before, I know it has something to do with board's RAM but I
tried forcing 8K, 16K and 32K but nothing worked. If I remember
corectly, the EzStart software reports it has memory window D000-D3FF so
it should have 16K memory.

If remember, you are the author of the driver. Could you send me some
more info about the net code (probably directly by mail)? Especially how
the driver is connected with kernel, where it's initialized etc.

I'll try to produce some debug outputs. BTW, how can I capture them?

vit herman

I did as you suggested (replaced !debug with 0) and got some outputs
(could not capture them though). The WD8003WP is behaving "normal"
nothing runs over the link neither I get "strange length packet". The
only weird thing with this card is that it gets detected as 8013 (eg.
16bit card), but in 8 bit slot (that's true, it's 8-bit ISA) but I'm
completly sure that it IS 8-bit card (Linux, NetBSD and SMC EzStart say
so). There's even a stick on the card saying WD8003WP!!! So why the hell
the driver thinks it's 8013??? Ah, and because wdeth driver wrongly
thinks it's 16-bit card, it doubles the card memory (8K to 16K) but
forcing it back to 8K is without problem.

The second card (WD8013EWC) is strange. The driver's debug output
(correctly) says it's a 16-bit card in 16-bit slot, with an interface
chip and with 16K of RAM. That's correct!!! But minix can't connect to
the network (can't find nameserver, no data go through). The card has
four LEDs (TX, RX and two more). What is strange: when I try to ping my
NetBSD router (named harald) from the minix machine (named simply
minix), both RX and TX blink, so I suppose that the card send the ICMP
packet correctly and the answer arrived, but there's problem with
recieving. And when I try to ping minix from harald I get "strange
length packet" even though the memory size is set correctly.

Any suggestions???

BTW: I got some problems with the 8013EWC under NetBSD (some device
timeouts - in fact it didn't work at all)but it works well under Linux
and I also tested it with NCSA Telnet+packet driver.

Vitek Herman
dragon@penguin.cz

philip

Do you mean that no packets are sent at all? I that case something
else must be wrong too.

It's a common problem. Adding the card's id as a special case is usually sufficient.

Can you check with tcpdump what happens exactly?


I don't think there is any way under Minix to capture debug output
from the kernel, so you have copy it manually. Minix-vmd does provide
/dev/log with kernel debug output.

Another thing to look at is the ethernet statistics that you get with F5.

--
Everyone I've met who had any experience with the phenomenon have confirmed my
opinion that if a Ph.D. in computer science knows anything at all about
computers, it's probably pretty much an accident. -- J.D. Baldwin, in asr