[4441] in linux-net channel archive
Re: Dual channel SMC cards ?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Scott Laird)
Mon Sep 16 16:39:53 1996
To: root <root@berg.coso.com>
cc: linux-net@vger.rutgers.edu
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 16 Sep 1996 11:14:22 +0200."
<199609160914.LAA14903@berg.coso.com>
From: scott@laird.com (Scott Laird)
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 11:49:28 -0700
In message <199609160914.LAA14903@berg.coso.com>, root writes:
>I'm a little tight on PCI slots on my printserver (before someone asks, this
>is a printserver for E size (A0) plotters. The idea is to read/write close to
> 10 Mbps ) So I'd like to use the SMC EtherPower^2 dual channel combo network
>cards; Before I order a bunch of these, does anyone know if these work just
>like 2 seperate cards in linux ? If anyone has suggestions as to what kind
>of system I need to read at wirespeed from 2 segments, and write to atleast
>2 other segments at the same speed I'd love to hear about it in private Email)
>(Setup: workstation -> NIC -> | |-> NIC -> printer
> workstation -> NIC -> + PCI bus linux box +-> NIC -> printer
> workstation -> NIC -> | |-> NIC -> printer
> Ultra Fast SCSI -> Buslogic 958 -> |
I have an EtherPower^2 in one of my Linux boxes, and it works, but it
took a bit of fiddling on my part to actually get things working, but
I think the problem was caused by the ancient PCI bus/BIOS in the
system (ASUS PCI/I SP3G, with an AMD 486/100), and not the card
itself.
The problem was that the BIOS wasn't assigning IRQs sanely. When I
installed the card in PCI slot N, and set slot N's IRQ to X in the
BIOS, the first port got IRQ X, and the second port got the IRQ for
slot N+1. Since the next slot had our BT-958 in it, things didn't
work very well. I fiddled with the BIOS for a while, and I never
could get it to work right. Eventually, I just swapped the BT-958
with our PCI Video card, and everything worked :-). The video card
doesn't care if the Ethernet card steals its IRQ.
With a newer system, I'm sure that things will work flawlessly.
One more thing -- you're interested in using Linux to feed an E-sized
plotter? Our system feeds a D-sized plotter (well, it's really an
inkjet, but don't tell HP's marketing people that...), plus routes
~1.5 GB/day, serves NFS, Samba, and AppleTalk, runs mail and news, and
a slew of other things. It's a busy little 486 :-).
Scott
