From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Aug 15 12:25:08 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id MAA07810 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 15 Aug 1996 12:25:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ceylon.informatik.uni-rostock.de (ceylon.informatik.uni-rostock.de [139.30.5.237]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id MAA07790 for ; Thu, 15 Aug 1996 12:25:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: by ceylon.informatik.uni-rostock.de id VAA24653; Thu, 15 Aug 1996 21:25:01 +0200 Received: by donau.informatik.uni-rostock.de id VAA07405; Thu, 15 Aug 1996 21:24:59 +0200 Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 21:24:59 +0200 From: Gunther Hipper Message-Id: <199608151924.VAA07405@donau.informatik.uni-rostock.de> To: vanmaren@fast.cs.utah.edu Subject: Re: Quad Ethernet Card Question Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Hi ! > Does someone have a list of multi-port PCI NIC cards (based on > the DEC chip) that are known to work with FreeBSD? > > We are looking primarially at the Cogent EM964, as it has 4 BNC > connectors as an option. We may go 10/100, which means the Cogent > EM440TX, and the ZNXY 346 (or 348) cards. There is also a card by > Rockwell Network Systems (RNS 2340). > > If only the ZNYX 314 is supported, we could go with the 314 > (or 315) cards. > > > All these cards seem very similar, in that they use a bridged PCI > design, so they should all "just work" with the Dec driver... > (Currently using FreeBsd 2.1.5) > The bridge is okay - the problems concerning multiport/bridged 21X40 cards are - the correct initialization of the mac-address MAC-address is programmed to 21X40 register by the driver reading the card's ROM. Problem: the ROM format and checksum differs from card to card. This is true for normal cards and especially for multiport cards. A Multiport card just has ONE ROM for the first 21X40 controller ... it's cheaper and requires less space than 4 cards. - the right setting of the 21X40 general purpose register The general purpose register controls bidirectional I/O pins. With these pins one can select the media (for example). Therefore, I bet the EM400 has to have another media select than the EM440. So - the driver is indeed very similar as far as concerning buffer management, interrupt handling and so on. For the initialisation of the card you have to know the exact specifications of the card or you have to take a try to get the ROM format and media select yourself. Maybe I could set up a list if there are some guys interested - I've been looking for this list myself..... Bye Gunther Gunther Hipper | University of Rostock | Department of Computer Science | Tel +49 381 498 3391 Albert-Einstein-Str. 21 | Fax +49 381 498 3440 18051 Rostock - Germany | Email Gunther.Hipper@informatik.uni-rostock.de