I was having lots of problems with my Linux network drivers also.<br>
After many reboots (to reset my cable modem) & ifconfig commands it finally worked.<br><br>Do you have another NIC hard laying around to test it, David?<br>Ideally, itīd be another ISA so you can compare apples to apples.<br>
<br>Thatīs where Iīd start: make sure itīs not your connection or the cables<br>youīre using.<br><br>hope that helps,<br>--miguel<br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 12:22 AM, David Lawyer <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dave@lafn.org">dave@lafn.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">I'm having trouble getting ethernet to work using an ISA card from<br>
1994 that supports both coax cable (2 types) and twisted-pair. It's a<br>
3com 3c509. According to the driver doc. it is only half duplex. I'm<br>
connecting it to a laptop running Windows XP. Does it take a<br>
straight-thru cable or a crossover cable? I set the Windows driver<br>
for half-duplex and the Linux driver has been recently changed so that<br>
it can't be set by options for full or half duplex. So I would expect<br>
it to require a straight-thru cable since it should only use one pair<br>
of wires ?? But the green light on both cards only comes on when I use<br>
a crossover cable. Windows says it's connected, but while both<br>
computers send packets, none are received by the other side and no<br>
interrupts in Linux are sent.<br>
<br>
But I've never used this NIC card (ISA bus) before and got it with a<br>
used PC, so it might not work correctly. The speed is 10Mbps and<br>
Windows has been told this, so it shouldn't be a speed mismatch. How<br>
do I troubleshoot this? How does half-duplex work over a crossover<br>
line with 2 circuits. Does each of the twisted pairs have<br>
bi-directional flow on them with collisions (half-duplex)?<br>
<br>
I suspect that something may be wrong with the linux driver module.<br>
For one, the instructions are wrong since the change log says the<br>
option of telling the driver whether it's half duplex, or whether it's coax<br>
ethernet (which I'm not using) has been removed. But this option is<br>
still mentioned in the kernel documentation. The instruction manual<br>
for the old ethernet card says that by default it works for coax cable<br>
and you need to use windows software to change it to twisted pair if<br>
that's what you're using. But since the Linux driver used to permit<br>
you to specify twisted pair, apparently this driver can set up the<br>
card to use twisted pair. Perhaps the driver sets it to twisted pair<br>
in all cases and has disabled the provision of the card to use coax.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
David Lawyer<br>
</font></blockquote></div><br>