Re: Network Adapters

[Ted Juszczak <klug01@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jeff Mayrand(mayrandj@home.com)@Sat, May 05, 2001 at 10:21:47AM -0400:
> I am getting ready to purchase a couple of new network adapters and have
> decided to go with either the 3Com-3c905b or the 3c905c,  I have looked at
> the specs but cant see any real difference.  Does anyone have any
> experience with either?  

Here's some stuff about the differences between a 3c905-B and a 3c905-C
that might be useful from the OpenBSD man page on those boards:


http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=xl&sektion=4&apropos=0&manpath=OpenBSD+Current
Specifically, some error messages can read: 

      xl%d: chip is in D3 power state -- setting to D0  This message applies
      only to 3C905B adapters, which support power management.  Some operating
      systems place the 3C905B in low power mode when shutting down, and some
      PCI BIOSs fail to bring the chip out of this state before configuring it.
      The 3C905B loses all of its PCI configuration in the D3 state, so if the
      BIOS does not set it back to full power mode in time, it won't be able to
      configure it correctly.  The driver tries to detect this condition and
      bring the adapter back to the D0 (full power) state, but this may not be
      enough to return the driver to a fully operational condition.  If you see
      this message at boot time and the driver fails to attach the device as a
      network interface, you will have to perform second warm boot to have the
      device properly configured.

      Note that this condition only occurs when warm booting from another oper-
      ating system.  If you power down your system prior to booting OpenBSD,
      the card should be configured correctly.

      xl%d: WARNING: no media options bits set in the media options
      register!  This warning may appear when using the driver on some Dell
      Latitude docking stations with built-in 3C905-TX adapters.  For whatever
      the reason, the ``MII available'' bit in the media options register on
      this particular equipment is not set, even though it should be (the
      3C905-TX always uses an external PHY transceiver).  The driver will at-
      tempt to guess the proper media type based on the PCI device ID word.
      The driver makes a lot of noise about this condition because the author
      considers it a manufacturing defect.


Also, 3-com has some drivers available from their web site
for these cards on Linux:

http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/detail.jsp?tab=support&pathtype=support&sku=3C905B-TX-NM

If you're like me, I tranpose the 3-Com 509 and the 905 numbers with ease.
One's a 10 mbit ISA and the other is a 10/100 mbit PCI. 


Ted Juszczak
linkmaster
linkmaster@kalamazoolinux.org