redhat and my ethernet 3c905b card

[JILL SMITH]

First of all, many thanks to Nathan Ollerenshaw <chrome@grid9.net> for solving my problem (and I'm sure countless other people's, too)!  On
September 4, he posted the solution to my problem with Redhat Linux 5.1 (kernel 2.0.35-2) and the 3c905b card as follows:


************************************* 
Then, go to /usr/src/linux/drivers/net and edit the 3c59x.c file. Scroll
down a bit and you shall find:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
/* Allow the use of fragment bus master transfers instead of only
programmed-I/O for Vortex cards. Full-bus-master transfers are always
enabled by default on Boomerang cards. If VORTEX_BUS_MASTER is
defined, the feature may be turned on using 'options'. */
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Under there you'll find something like 

#ifdef YOU_ARE_BRAVER_THAN_ME
#define VORTEX_BUS_MASTER
#endif

delete the #ifdef and the #endif lines, and recompile your kernel to
taste. Your 3c905b card should work like a charm! :)

*************************************

I still have one problem though, so I though if Nathan or anybody else out there could help out with this one, that would be great!  Originally, my problem
was that even when I had the newest Linux Kernel with the 0.99E version of the 3c59x driver, the card seemed to initialize but could not get out onto
the LAN.  Once I used the above solution, I was now able to get onto the LAN, but the driver is still reporting a WARNING saying that no MII
transceivers were found when it initializes the card.  I also noticed another strange thing between the initialization of the 3c905 versus the 3c905b
which is that the 3c905 uses word-wide RAM with a 3:5 split and the 3c905b uses byte-wide RAM with a 5:3 split.  I don't know if that means
anything is wrong - just thought it was weird.   I am in a very sticky situation, as we are just bringing Linux into our business for the first time and
there are a lot of skeptics out there, so I would not want a driver problem to make my servers fail if it can be avoided.  Everything seems to be fine,
except for the warning.  Does anyone know how to get rid of it or if it will be a potential problem??  I'd appreciate any help.  The following are the
messages I have received from both cards:

3C509

Swansea University Computer Society IPX 0.34 for NET3.035
IPX Portions Copyright (c) 1995 Caldera, Inc.
Appletalk 0.17 for Linux NET3.035
3c59x.c:v0.99E 5/12/98 Donald Becker http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html
eth0: 3Com 3c905 Boomerang 100baseTx at 0xec80, 00:10:4b:9e:09:3f, IRQ 10
  8K word-wide RAM 3:5 Rx:Tx split, NWay Autonegotiation interface.
  MII transceiver found at address 24, status 7869.
  Enabling bus-master transmits and whole-frame receives.


3C509B

Swansea University Computer Society IPX 0.34 for NET3.035
IPX Portions Copyright (c) 1995 Caldera, Inc.
Appletalk 0.17 for Linux NET3.035
3c59x.c:v0.99E 5/12/98 Donald Becker http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html
eth0: 3Com 3c905B Cyclone 100baseTx at 0xec00, 00:10:4b:c4:51:18, IRQ 10
  8K byte-wide RAM 5:3 Rx:Tx split, NWay Autonegotiation interface.
  ***WARNING*** No MII transceivers found!
  Enabling bus-master transmits and whole-frame receives.



Thanks in Advance - Jill
Jill K. Smith
Lockheed Martin
919-541-5323