by >The problem with the tulip cards are the (possibly) different media
>switching methods of different manufacturers. It works in many cases, but
>not in all. [...]
the DEC chip drivers -- or at least for the SMC 8432...see below.
[lots of good status info munched]
>> >>I have a EtherPower Card from SMC and I can not seem to get it to
>> >>work.. Ther kernal reports the correct IRQ and it does find the card
>> >>but the light does not go on and I cant seem to be able to get it to
>> >>go past that stage.. I am using the tuilp.c driver and 2.0.23 kernal
>> >>and it does not do anything.. please help
working fine from WIN95 but not from Linux, so I downloaded the latest
kit from the SMC web site and as an experiment tried to load the
plain DOS ODI drivers from DOS -- and they failed with an utterly
meaningless error message. Playing with the system I found that the
only way to make the DOS drivers load was to turn off the Plug-and-Pray
feature from the CMOS configuration screen; with it off I booted back
to Linux -- AND THE CARD NOW WORKS. The interface will run or fail
depending on the setting of the PnP option in CMOS.
Obviously (I hope) there could be many reasons why the card might not
work in a particular environment, but if you've got a nonworking
net card using the DEC chip, try turning off the PnP option in the
CMOS setup and see if that makes it work.
In my environment the system board is a Micronics M55Hi with Phoenix
BIOS; this may be related to the problem since some hardware vendors
have described the Phoenix BIOS as the cause for many of the problems
that their customers have with PnP devices.
Joe Morris / MITRE