3c905B support ??

[Torbjorn Lindgren]

On Thu, 12 Nov 1998, Dirk Porezag wrote:
> I have a question regarding the status of the 3c905B (cyclone) support.
> All major distributions don't support this card although the 

Well, RH5.2 supports it out of the box, and even RH 5.1 does support it if
you use the updated boot-disk and the updated kernels AFAIK (You only need
the updated boot disk if you need network support during installation
and/or to get the updated kernel RPM's).

Now, both uses the 0.99E driver AFAIK, so if you have Cyclone cards AND
100Mbit you probably need to give options to the driver...

If you need network during the installation (say ftp/NFS installation) you
need to run it in expert mode (enter 'expert' on the prompt). This require
you to know a little more about what is in the machine, but usually this
isn't a problem. After telling it that you have a 3c90x, you then tell it
that you wish to give it additional parameters, and enter 'options=4' for
100 Mbit.

For normal operation of RH5.1updated or RH5.2 you just add 
'options 3c59x options=4' to /etc/conf.modules if you want 100 Mbit/half
duplex operation.


> http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html web page
> lists it as supported card. I can't get the card to work with my
> Dell machine (an older 3c905 card works fine but I can't find anybody
> selling these cards any more). I'm running Linux 2.0.35. Do I need a 
> more recent kernel to get this card working ? If yes which one ?

All of the later 2.0.36pre kernels should have 0.99E, which mostly works
for the B cards (you need to physically unplug it or run the DOS config
program to revive it after Win95B+/Win98 shuts it down, and it doesn't
handle speed-detection correctly).

That, or just replace the driver with a newer version, either 0.99E or
0.99G. I haven't used 0.99G, 0.99E works fine enough for ME, and I have
seen mixed reports on 0.99G. 

But if you don't already have 0.99E in use it's probably worth trying
0.99G instead and see if it works for you (so you don't have to all that
magic to revive it on dual-boot machines).