pci card removal / installation
 

My goal is to install a 2-serial / 1-parallel port pci card (compusa p/n 271773 w/ NetMos chip) on my PII Sony Viao. As far as I know I'm running the newest version of debian 3.0r1 i386. Currently everything is running ok with the cards that are installed now, 2 ethernet cards (Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82557 [Ethernet Pro100] (rev 08) and Ethernet controller, Lite-On Communications Inc LNE100TX(rev 20))), and an extra SIIG ide card. I'm not using the Intel ethernet card or the ide card, but need to remove them to make room for the parallel/serial card. If I remove only the ethernet card, I lose functionality from the ethernet card still installed (which was always the one connected). This could be why I was having problems trying to install the parallel/serial card, but I'm not sure, I really don't know how to install the parallel/serial card once I figure out how to remove the existing cards. Could someone help me to properly remove the two cards and install the parallel/serial card? If you need more info, I'll be happy to get it as long as you can help me figure out where it is, I'm a real newbie. Thanks in advance. brou0040

Just to put things logically;
You have 2 ethernet cards (pci I assume) and these would be configured by your system as eth0 and eth1 and you would have dhcp or assigned addresses for them.
You want to remove one of the ethernet cards and replace it with the serial/parallel card.
I hope I have got those facts correct.
1st question is how are the ethernet cards are addressed. Have you manually assigned addresses to the cards or are you using dhcp? If you had 2 cards what were you using them for? It sounds like your system is trying to use both cards.

I had both cards in for when I was using windows with the machine. I had a spare card, didn't want to buy a router, and the cable internet company was being a pain about MAC addresses, so I set up internet sharing on the machine, in one card and out the other so I could have access on another machine. The ide card was so I could use a zip drive with 2 harddrives. Now that I switched it over to linux, I'm only using 1 harddrive with no zip, and I bought a router now so I don't need the second ethernet card. I'm not sure how the cards are set up, but eth0 and eth1 looks familiar. I didn't manually set them, I only tried to do my best during installation (which was a lot of guessing). I never thought I was so computer illiterate until I started using linux. By the way, I'm trying to install the new card since I would like to drive stepper motors from the parallel port and don't want to fry my mother board from the motor inductance. Many places have suggested adding a second card, so I'll only fry the card, not the motherboard. I believe that the cards must be using dhcp since I never set up the IP. Control panel / information / pci shows the correct ethernet card and no longer displays the removed one, so its getting that right. Under i-o ports, with both installed it lists eth1 and eth0, under interrupts, it has eth1 as 11. With one card removed, it only has eth0 under i-o ports and I forgot to look at the interupt. My guess is that the card I'm using is eth1 with both installed, but the system switches it to eth0 when I pull one out, would this be the problem? I don't know how to change eth addresses or change the IP, that was all in the installation and I don't know how to get back to it. Thanks for the help.

Some motherboards have quirks about using certain cards in certain slots. Try removing the card that is giving problems and leave the other card in. Boot the system and check on /var/log/syslog to make sure that the card is correctly idenified and allocated. Also as root do ifconfig and you should get a report about your ethernet. If you don't try switching the card to another slot. If all is well then shutdown and install the serial card.

No joy with removing either ethernet card, but it seems that removing the IDE card cause no problems, so I stuck the serial in to see what happens. Right now I care about the parallel port so I was looking for paraport in pci information, but I found that when I install the card, the following snipit is added to the pci information file.

00:0f.0 Serial controller: Unknown device 9710:9835 (rev 01) (prog-if 02 [16550])
Subsystem: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic (formerly NCR): Unknown device 0012 Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 10
I/O ports at fc50
I/O ports at fc58
I/O ports at fc88
I/O ports at fc90
I/O ports at fc98
I/O ports at fca0

To me it looks like its adding everything as serial ports. The way the card is designed, its a card with 2 serial ports attached to the card and a connection from the card to the parallel port which is supported by a seperate slot. Would this be any reason why its not recognizing it as a parallel port? Looking for other postings on the net, it looks like I need to modify the file that supports /etc/modules.conf by adding the address and irq (found in pci information or 'lspci -v' to the options parport_pc line. The examples show that it should currently be (with original parallel port, which is working)

alias parport_lowlevel parport_pc
options parport_pc io=0x378 irq=none,none

although I do have the alias...., there is no line options line whatsoever and there is no 0x378 in the entire file (0x378 is working because I can write to it).

So now my questions are, am I on the right track with /etc/modules.conf, why is there no option line for 0x378, and why is my parallel port not showing up (or why is it possibly showing up as a serial port and how do I change that).

Thank you so much again.
brou0040

Just looking at my modules.conf you can add the option line below the alias. Try it I doubt it will do any harm.

Maybe I could add it, but why isn't it there already? Besides that, to add the option for the second parallel port, I need to know the address that linux should determine. I do not think its being properly recognized. Do you know how to get the card to be properly recognized?

I added the option line and it made no change. In order for me to set up the new port though, I need to know its address. I tried setting up the card in windows ME to see how it was handled there. The system automatically set in to 1050 - ??? as the port address and I had to manually change it to 0278. Then I was able to access the port. Is there a similar process in linux? The next question I have is that under I/O ports in the control panel information section, it says

0378 - 037a parport0
0778 - 077a parport0
fc98 - fc9a parport1

What I'm wondering is if I need to change fc98 - fc9a to 0278 - 027a and how would I do this?

Thank you,
brou0040