help w/ Dell PowerEdge sc420

Tom Lord lord at emf.net
Fri Apr 29 11:33:59 PDT 2005


I'm trying to bring FreeBSD up on a Dell PowerEdge sc420.

The machine has a built-in (on the motherboard) Ethernet engine
described as "Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Adaptor".  The 
BIOS screens accessible during booting don't provide much by
way of additional useful information, afaict.

I am bringing up a slightly old FreeBSD -- 5.2 -- with hopes of
getting ethernet support up, plugging into a DSL line, and upgrading
over the net.

Alas, 5.2 does not seem to detect the Ethernet engine.  There is no
"/dev/bge", for example.   Thus, I can't even get to the "upgrade" 
step short of busting out an old modem :-)

Help?  I'm unfamiliar with:

    (i) how FreeBSD autodetects this kind of hardware
    (ii) how to brute-force install a driver by hand and try to help
         it find this hardware

I am competent to rebuild the kernel if there is some config file 
I ought to tweak although it's been a few years since I've done so -- 
so hints about that process, if necessary, would be appreciated.

Alternatively (but less desirably): if I scrape up my pennies and buy
a more recent distro will I have better results?

Thanks,
-t

p.s.: the *next* problem is about configuring X11 for:

    (a) The "Intel Copper River Graphics Controller" on this board.
        The X configurators on the 5.2 disk crash and burn here.
        I've been assuming that this *might* be easier to solve
        after successfully upgrading.

    (b) I've never had much luck getting `moused' to understand
        my Kensington ExpertMouse trackball as a four-button 
        device.  On this new box, the situation is at this stage
        slightly worse --- it seems not to grok this device at all.




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