Hey,

I just got a series of old i486 working again and I wanted to integrate them into my network. One of them, and only one of them, came with an old network card for ISA. I identified her as an Intel EtherExpress Pro/10.

Debian 1.3.1 came with the module eepro.o. When I use a cat5 for 10BaseT the connection shows no problems at all and the module handles everything with no trouble. However my net runs with a coax (cheapernet / 10Base2), 10BaseT is just a diagnostic subnetwork. When I run the card with the coax connected and ping the server there is the output "network unreachable", then the module once reports that
eth0: XMT status=0x400
and then a constant stream of
eth0: XMT status=0x440
which is printed both to the console as well as the kernel logs.

The weird thing is that the module first finds the card under 0x300. So what in all heavens does this output mean (no documentation is provided).

Any help will be appreciated...
thx

I will take a swag. I have no idea on the status code but some of the old ISA NIC cards that I had were not capable of auto detection. You had to manually configure the card for either 10base2 or 10baseT.

A quick search found what looks like the configuration utility. This is a DOS program so you will have to run it from a floppy.
http://www.intel.com/support/etherex.../CS-000575.htm

i'll give it as try

what does this program do? If it adresses EPROM on the NIC, is it possible for me to do so through linux (maybe through the kernel?).

thx

The file appears to be a self extracting zip file that contains the utility SOFTSET2. This is a utility to setup and configure the network card. The other files in the archive are drivers.

I don't know of a linux application for configuring an ISA network card but that does not mean one does not exist.

worked

much obliged...