setup ISA network cards
 

I have an old compaq:

P 133
40 megs EDU RAM
4 gig drive (installed Slackware 9.1)
and just recently I got three 3-Com Etherlink III ISA network cards.


This system is being designed to be a net server using Slack9.1. Thats it. After its up I'm getting rid of the monitor & keyboard.
However an 'ifconfig -a' displays a
lo with a loopback address

the system is not seeing the ISA nics.

Help here.

try a pnpdump to get info on the cards.

No boards found....

<the lights on all 3 nics are on>

do you know the chipsets?

Um I'm not sure I understand you.

they're 3com cards and every 'chip' on the board says 3com as well.

i'm meaning 3c509, 3c503, etc. have you tried assigning ip's to the cards

ifconfig eth0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

I can't because the system is not even seeing the cards.

an ifconfig dumps only the 'lo' with a 127.0.0.1 address etc. and no 'eth0' entry at all.

here are a couple of links to configuring the cards, providing you can identify them, w/isa cards you'll probably have to give some specifics such as io and irq. look into it here

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/doc...WTO.html#ss2.1

http://www.linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/Hardware-HOWTO/nic.html
good luck.

Ok heres whats on the card

3Com and right next to it is

Etherlink III
1994 3C5098-TP
All rights reserved

Assy 03-0021-201 Rev - A
FCC ID: DF63C5098


what I gather the chip id is 3c5098?

yes it seems to be a 3c509 which if i remember correctly is supported. have a look at the links i provided, and i'll get back to you tommorow if noone else picks this up. i have to go for the evening. good luck.

Ok I did a reinstall, and during install, setup my network which included probing for the cards. It said it found a 3c509b card, which is what I have and configured it. That one is up and running.

NOW what about the other two cards? Why weren't they detected and configured and how to I do so?

in addition to the other links look here

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/doc...WTO.html#ss2.4

good luck.

Have You Set The Cards Up ?
 

One other thing to consider. If the card has no jumpers then the only way to set up things like the address and IRQ is to use a DOS based setup program from 3Com. If you go to the 3Com website and do a bit of hunting around using the name of your card as the search term you should find it.

VERY IMPORTANT
1) When you run the setup program make sure that the card is NOT set to plug and play or most distros throw a hissy fit when they try and talk to the card.

2) After changing any settings you must power down your PC and restart it for the changes to take effect.

Ed Almos
Budapest, Hungary

errr the closest I saw to enabling plug and play was hotplug, which is totally different of course. What exactly do you mean bya DOS based program setup?

3Com Network Card Setup
 

From what I remember (and it was a few years ago) the 3Com cards that came without jumpers used a program that ran under MSDOS to set them up. It gave you a simple graphical display where you could configure the card address, card interrupt, network media type (if your card was fitted with a BNC socket) and you could also enable and disable plug and play. After altering your settings you had to restart to make them take affect.

As I said, have a look on the 3Com website using the card you have as a search term and you should find the program I am talking about.

Ed Almos
Budapest, Hungary