5.2.1-RELEASE ethernet troubles

[Stephen Krauth]

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> > [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Stephen Krauth
> > Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 12:37 AM
> > To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> > Subject: 5.2.1-RELEASE ethernet troubles
> >
> >
> > I'm at wits end here trying to setup a new Athlon64 machine with the
> > i386 release of 5.2.1-RELEASE.  The problem is getting it to like a
> > network card of some sort; I've tried and failed with 4 so far:
> >
> > 1.  Motherboard built-in NVidia gigethernet (Ok, didn't expect that
> >     one to be supported)
> > 2.  Cheapo VT6105-based card using vr(4) driver:  It's recongnized in
> >     ifconfig but I get the dreaded "watchdog timeout" errors.  I can't
> >     seem to disable PnP in the BIOS per archive suggestions.  Also
> >     tried swapping slots, but it always shows on the same IRQ.  ACPI
> >     on/off doesn't matter.
>
> your bios on the motherboard doesen't like that card.  try flashing the
> bios if possible with a newer version.
>
> > 3.  Slightly less cheap LinkSys LNE100TX, using dc0 driver: dmesg
> >     reports "MII without PHY!" error and ifconfig therefore doesn't
> >     see it.
>
> lots of hardware versions of that card, just for grins try booting
> fbsd 4.10 and see if it is recognized.  driver issues galore.
>
> > 4.  ANCIENT 10BaseT card using ed0 driver:  It's recongnized but
> >     gives "kernel: ed0 device timeout" errors.
> >
>
> To get that to work you need to go into bios and change the resources to
> manually assigned then exclude the irq you have on that card from the
> pnp manager in the bios.  even then, this may not work on all irq's.
> you may be a while at testing different ones.

I would have tried that but the PnP config on my BIOS won't let me.
It only lets you reserve IRQs 3-15 (skipping a few) and these cards
consistently show up on IRQ 17.

> Jsut keep trying different pci nics.  a intel etherexpress pro100 would be
> my next choice (fxp0)
>
> Ted

Anyway, I'll try all of these suggestions and hopefully get it to
work.  Thanks!

- Steve K