Hi,

I am looking for information on one of the NE2000 NIC's in my server. It has problem, not listed in the Ethernet how-to, or at least I don't think so.

I don't have any information on the NIC accept for the info on the board itself:

Novell NetWare Remote Programm Loader
NetWare Ethernet NE2000 VL00EC 880819

Is this NIC a plug-and-play device? That might cause the problem. Maybe, original DOS setup software can detect that problem. I was wondering if anybody has got that kind of software.

The NIC is detected during boot-up. The LED's in the NIC glow, whenever they have to, but the NIC can't pick up any signal from the ethernet. Other NIC's function perfectly in the exact same configuration.

I can also try to use the diagnostic programs at http://www.scyld.com/diag. However, I don't have a clue about what I have to look for in the resulting diagnostics, an ygelp on that would be great.

Any information or tips is welcome.

Gilion

I sort of recall a command 'isapnp' which lists all PnP devices on the machine, which might tell you something.

Some pre-PnP ISA cards came with DOS configuration programs. You had to set IRQ, IO range (and some other thing I forget) using this. I believe the linux ISA NIC driver needs this info. I think I used Debian's 'netcardconfig' utility to do that, and it ended up in the modules.conf file.

Maybe the diagnostic program could find out what these parameters are set for in your card. Trial and error is probably also a possibility, although I think I would probably junk the card before it got to that.

What does dmesg say about it?

dmesg gives this:
NE*000 ethercard probe at 0x320: 00 40 05 17 1e 53
eth0: NE2000 found at 0x320, using IRQ 5

cat proc/ioports
0320-033f : NE2000

cat proc/interrupts
5: 0 XT-PIC NE2000

And nothing else on these ports/interrupts.

Somehow, running isapnp with the default isapnp.conf results in a warning about the fact that no PCI devices are detected. There are no PCI slots in my computer, so thats right:

Neither /proc/bus/pci/devices nor /proc/pci found, so PCI resuource conflict not checked.

I think I have to lookup the manpages of isapnp to see if I am using it correct.

Gilion

No PCI? An old 486 maybe? I've never seen a PnP NIC, all the ones I've used have the DOS utility for setup. Looks like linux has installed your card OK. Does ifconfig show eth0 as up? I suppose you could toggle 'ifconfig eth0 up/down' a few times to see if it might be an intermittent hardware fault. Pretty old piece of hardware tho'...

Yes, you are correct. I am setting up a zero budget server/network with some fossil remains. I am dealing with a i486dx and two NIC's without manual or software.

I identified one as a rtl 8019, which can be set to PnP. I have been able to set it manualy using the DOS utility, still available at realtek.com.tw. Novell doesn't provide similar software for their Netware Ethernet NE2000 V1.OOEC on their site. Since it is the original NE2000, and thus very common, I was hoping to find more info here and/or the dos utility.

Both cards have been configured identical using ifconfig, ifup, ifdown, the etc/interfaces-file and dhcp3. The realtek board is working fine. The Novell Netware board doesn't receive any packets, according to tcpdump. The board is detected correctly and the LEDs at the board indicate activity when packets are send, so I still believe it can run, despite its age.

In fact I do have the driver disk for an old ne2000. You are welcome to a copy of the setup.exe, but I imagine there are dozens of variations on ne2k clones.

There is also a lot of old software at

http://www.network-drivers.com

including some setup/config files for ne2k's inside the zip files there. Free rego required apparently to download anything.

I had the same plan but my 486 m/b died at the last minute, so I had to use a p133, so got some PCI slots.

Thanks for the adress of that site. However I tried to use the DOS drivers provided there, but none of them did the trick. One of the drivers reports a hardware conflict, but provides no means of a solution.

I tried to compile the diagnostic program of Donald Becker, www.scyld.com. It gave compiling errors about non-existing *.h files (unistd.h, stdio.h, stdlib.h, getopt.h, sys/io.h) but no information on the correct IRQ and IO port. If I provide, IRQ and IO port, wrong, will the card be detected then?

BTW: pnpdump doesn't detect any unconfigured pnp devices.

Do I have any options at the moment, or is it time to dump the interface?

Gilion

I had a look at the diagnostic program ne2k-diag.c. No trouble compiling. I think you must be missing a package - libc6-dev maybe?

If IRQ and IO port are incorrect I think the module will just fail to load.

I set up my 2 ISA NICs about 18 months ago with a floppy-based firewall/router and have not had to touch it since then. So my recollections are getting a bit hazy.

The only other thing I can suggest (apart from trying the diagnostic progs again, and linux pnp tools) is to have a look at the BIOS settings.

I can't even remember what the BIOS screens look like on a 486.

Shouldn't be too hard to find old ISA NICs for next-to-nothing. Not much good for anything but a linux router

Thanks for the tip on the libc6-dev packages. It's suggested package, so apt-get skipped it. The ne2k-diag proggie now results in:

Checking the ethercard at 0x300.
Receive alignement error counter (0x30d) is ff
Failed initial NE2000 probe, value ff.
Station Address PROM 0:ff ff ff ... (<-16 ff's)
Station Address PROM 0x10:ff ff ff ... (<-16 ff's)
Invalid signature found, wordlength 2.

I tried scanport (in hwtools package) to find the ports for the ethercard. There's only one unknown device which is twenty ports wide: 320 - 33f. So now I only need to find out it's IRQ, which I will try to do manualy if I can't find a package to do so.

The contradiction between scanport and ne2k-diag both is confusing.

When I use the hardware address to find out the cards manufacturer. Four companies are asociated with 00:40:05: TRENDWare, LinkSys, Simple Net and ANI Communications Inc. After inspection of the card it self I believe it's type indication is
one of:
ETHER-16CT REV-D1
8ETHER16CTD1

So far... Hope to get it going this week.

YES it's working.

I tried one of the drivers supplied by trendware. The NIC has a bnc and a rj45 connector. The NIC was set to bnc. With the dos utility supplied by trendware I was able to set it to rj45. Now it works, I get a ping and can move on configuring the network.

Thanks for the help.

Gilion

Nice detective work!