[vortex] Re: VP6 + 3c905 -- any working machines?

[William Park]

On Fri, Feb 16, 2001 at 01:52:01PM +0100, Bogdan Costescu wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Feb 2001, William Park wrote:
> 
> > This is not related to Beowulf specifically.  But, I'm trying to put
> > together 8-cpu Linux cluster, and need some basic insight to ethernet
> > card problem.
> 
> Probably the best would have been vortex@scyld.com, but I'll answer here.
> 
> >     I have 2 VP6 machines with 3c905 ethernet card (3c905B in one,
> >     3c905C in the other).  Each machine can ping itself, but not each
> >     other.  I think packet is going out, since LED on ethernet switch
> >     (5-port SmartLink) is blinking.
> 
> Can you check the inscription on your 3C905C card(s) (by opening the case)
> to see if they are 3C905CX (notice the X at the end) ? The CX cards are
> newly introduced by 3Com and have a small change in design: they need more
> time to reset their Rx part. This is only added to the recent drivers.
> If the Rx reset is not done properly, the card will not receive any
> packet, so the described behaviour is to be expected.

Hi Bogdan,

Thanks for the pointers.  Indeed, my cards are
    - 3c905B-TXM and 3c905CX-TXM

Fortunately, I was able to find '3c90x' module from 3Com website, and it
works with the new 3c905CX.  I am using it as module, right now.  Later,
I'll compile it into kernel.

---William Park, Open Geometry Consulting