Xref: utzoo unix-pc.general:6371 comp.sys.att:10755 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!shelby!apple!portal!cup.portal.com!thad From: thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) Newsgroups: unix-pc.general,comp.sys.att Subject: Re: Voice Card and Ethernet board Message-ID: <35694@cup.portal.com> Date: 7 Nov 90 08:38:32 GMT References: Organization: The Portal System (TM) Lines: 49 marsella@athos.rutgers.edu (Stacy Marsella) in writes about problems with 3B1 Ethernet and Voice Power. I've literally only a few minutes on-line right now, so I'll "do" a brief answer followed by a longer one later this week. The Ethernet and Voice Power co-exist fine on my systems. HOWEVER: after several months of dorking-around (re: another expansion card), I've discovered there IS sensitivity to the ORDER in which the device drivers are loaded as well as apparent bugs with /etc/lddrv itself. The "clue" was in the UNIXPC Device Driver Writer's Guide re: two 128Kbyte sections (for a max of 0x40000) and the fact /etc/lddrv allowed me to load 0x47000 worth of device drivers (several of which crapped out by hanging the system upon an apparent interrupt until I removed xt (BLIT Terminal support) and some other stuff which I never used). Also, if/when you run diags on the Ethernet cards, be forewarned that multiple repeats of test 5 (I believe, the 16-block burst test or something like that) reveal a bug in the diags ... ALL Ethernet cards will fail this test even though they WILL operate correctly and normally in the system. The only test that seems reliable is to "ping" your system using a system that has "ping". And if you use the UA menus to unload and reload device drivers, the ORDER of loading (as shown in /etc/lddrv/drivers) WILL change, often to the detriment of your system's operation. This kinda screws the whole idea of dynamically loadable device drivers. :-( What REALLY puzzles me is the following (via "/etc/lddrv/lddrv -sv"): DEVNAME ID BLK CHAR LINE SIZE ADDR FLAGS wind 0 -1 7 -1 0x9000 0x53000 ALLOC BOUND lipc 1 -1 -1 -1 0x7000 0x360000 ALLOC BOUND cmb 2 -1 -1 -1 0x3000 0x5c000 ALLOC BOUND qt 3 -1 18 -1 0x2000 0x367000 ALLOC BOUND tp 4 -1 10 -1 0x3000 0x36b000 ALLOC BOUND starlan 5 -1 11 -1 0x14000 0x3de000 ALLOC BOUND voice 6 -1 13 -1 0xa000 0x33e000 ALLOC BOUND ether 7 -1 14 -1 0x13000 0x348000 ALLOC BOUND Perhaps "wind" is not counted in the 0x40000 total. Quien sabe? In any event, the above configuration works; almost any other order totally freezes the system (even the red "heartbeat" LED stops blinking). And, yes, this machine has an expansion chassis (which itself is the cause of a few anomalies on several systems (but not all)). Weird voodoo and juju here ... maybe we all gotta dance under the full moon and swing dead chickens over our heads! :-) Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]