Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 17:08:42 +0100 (CET) From: "Stein M. Sandbech" <stein@wopr.ife.no> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: Re: FreeBSD at war with Win95 ... Message-ID: <199803181608.RAA26083@wopr.ife.no>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
FYI
Intro:
A while back I reported problems with Windoze95/FreeBSD on a P-II machine
(266MHz) and a 3Com ethernet controller.
The problem appeared to originate in a conflict between FreeBSD and W95
on how the 3Com 900XL Combo ethernet card should be configured regarding media
type (utp/aui/bnc). Re. previous mails on freebsd.questions.
By "downgrading" W95 to an older version (primo 1997), the system runs as well
as expected.
Background:
Initially the machine came with W95 preconfigured from our distributor. I
went ahead and partitioned the disk, and installed FreeBSD 2.2.5 and the OSBS
boot manager. After the initial trial run of W95, and before FreeBSD
installation I configured the 3Com card with 3Com's configuration utility,
setting media type to BNC and proceeded to test the card, all OK.
FreeBSD ran OK, but W95 performed as on a 386 with not enough memory, taking
minutes to boot. Staring Word, Excel etc. also resulted in long delays.
I also tried another 3Com card (Etherlink II/16, ISA) to no avail.
I put a network analyzer on that particular network, but there were no network
activity during the hang-situations with W95. After fiddling around with
with both the HW and SW configurations in W95 and FreeBSD, I decided that I
should try to install another version of W95, under the theory that the problem
originated either in Asustek BIOS or Windows 95 patches (or rather lack of).
I did not find any newer, so I installed an older (non OEM) version of W95, and
presto, everything was OK.
Conclusion:
* No HW conflicts detected.
* No network activity while hanging in W95.
* FreeBSD performed incredibly well during the whole ordeal.
* Our distributor had the machine for testing, reinstalled another OEM version
of W95 (new), worked OK initially, but same problem after a FreeBSD run!
* Asustek MB BIOS settings review OK.
* 3Com 900XL may result in dismal NFS performance, but it works.
* Windows 95 reinstalled off the original CD, same problem.
- Seems to be related to newer versions of Windows 95.
Comments anyone?
Stein Morten
/* Stein M Sandbech Email: stein@ife.no **
** Senior Systems Engineer, EDP dept Email: stein@www.ife.no **
** Institute for Energy Technology Tel: +47 63 80 60 00 **
** Box 40, N-2007 Kjeller, NORWAY Fax: +47 63 81 11 68 */
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199803181608.RAA26083>