[vortex] Tyan Thunder K7 S2462 Dual 3c59x

Bogdan Costescu bogdan.costescu@iwr.uni-heidelberg.de
Tue Jan 15 07:01:00 2002


On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Kirk Bocek wrote:

> In fact, I accidentally used my real address in my first message. Is 
> there any way to delete it off of the archives?

No idea. Scyld is the list owner. But didn't you use it again just now ?

> Index #2: Found a 3c980 series, server edition adapter at 0x1c80.
> EEPROM contents (64 words, offset 0):
>  0x000: 9807 9807 9807 9807 6d51 6d51 6d51 6d51
>  0x008: 0001 0001 0001 0001 00a9 00a9 00a9 00a9
>  0x010: 0181 0181 0181 0181 10f1 10f1 10f1 10f1
>  0x018: 6301 6301 6301 6301 4341 4341 4341 4341
>  0x020: 0001 0001 0001 0001 ffff ffff ffff ffff

I would say that this is a joke. If you compare the EPROM content of the 2 
interfaces you'll see that they are very different. Data at the beginning 
of the EPROM actually has a meaning that has to be interpreted by the 
driver in order to program the chip correctly. I don't know how often this 
situation occurs; I think that in the "tulip world" there are a 
significant number of cases so that the driver can use some default values 
in such case...

>  Manufacture date (MM/DD/YYYY) 10/17/2054, division Q, product Qm.

How nice! So where are the Moon and Mars bases ? Still driving a 
gas-based car ? 8-)

It might be possible that 3Com's DOS based tool is able to detect and fix 
such a broken EPROM.
Another solution would be to copy to content of the EPROM from the first 
interface and change the MAC address only (or keep them identical in case 
you connect them to different networks as Sun does) based on the 
presumtion that they are identical hardware-wise. Unfortunately there is 
no ready-made utility to do this; vortex-diag can be "convinced" to write 
a whole EPROM with some source modifications.

Just as a data point: did this board run before something else than Linux ?

-- 
Bogdan Costescu

IWR - Interdisziplinaeres Zentrum fuer Wissenschaftliches Rechnen
Universitaet Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, GERMANY
Telephone: +49 6221 54 8869, Telefax: +49 6221 54 8868
E-mail: Bogdan.Costescu@IWR.Uni-Heidelberg.De