3com900/Interrupt problem?

Donald Becker becker@cesdis1.gsfc.nasa.gov
Thu May 6 15:08:20 1999


On Thu, 6 May 1999, Mark Brooks wrote:

> The card works in windows, but it shares an interrupt with an 'IRQ
> holder for PCI steering', and I've not been able to change this so far.
> (Is this bad? Can linux share interrupts?)

Linux can use shared PCI interrupts.

> In Linux, the card is recognised when I insert the 3c59x module, and
> recognises the AUI interface- dmesg gives:
> 
> 3c59x.c:v0.99H 11/17/98 Donald Becker
> http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html
> eth0: 3Com 3c900 Boomerang 10Mbps Combo at 0xfcc0,  00:60:97:a4:52:c3,
> IRQ 10
>   8K word-wide RAM 3:5 Rx:Tx split, autoselect/10Mbs AUI interface.
>   Enabling bus-master transmits and whole-frame receives.

I hope you are using an AUI transceiver.

> but I can't ping my gateway or anything. The IRQ seems to be 10 here,
> but if I read /proc/interrupts is says:

[[ No eth0 entry ]]

The interrupt will only show up when the interface is active / "UP".

> ...with no mention of any ethernet card.  It is, however in
> /proc/ioports. Is this normal? Do I need a new version of the driver?
> (I'm running RedHat 6.0.)

No.  Most drivers versions will work your Boomerang card.  Most of the
driver updates are to work with changes in newer adapters.

> I also seem to have a large number of received packets from ifconfig,
> but my transmitted packets stay really low (eg: 3!) even after playing
> with ping and stuff.

This usually points to an IP address, netmask or routing problem.

Donald Becker					  becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov
USRA-CESDIS, Center of Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences.
Code 930.5, Goddard Space Flight Center,  Greenbelt, MD.  20771
301-286-0882	     http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/people/becker/whoiam.html