Isa Nics!

[Brink]

I'm really asking for it here, and yeah, normally I'd just buy a PCI card, but here is my situation:

I have an emachine with redhat 9
emachines as you probably know are extreme budget machines that skimp on just about everything you can skimp on, therefore the machine only has 2 pci slots, and 1 isa. 1 pci slot has a scsi card that cannot be removed, the other has a ethernet card. I want this machine to do NAT so I'll need 2 nics. Both PCI slots being taken up I need an ISA nic, and I have one (as in, only 1) to use. The card is ancient as you could expect and it has a few jumpers that leave me puzzled.

There's the essential IRQ jumper of course, no prob there, there's the BNC/TP jumper, also no problem. Then there's a 6 pin jumper with settings "M1" "M2" and "M3", a 4 ping jumper with "I1" and "I2" and lastly there is a 3 pin jumper with "W" at the top, and "N" at the bottom (wide/narrow?) I'm clueless as to what these settings could possibly mean! Are they additional BNC/Topology settings for token ring or something? Anyone here work with this old technology?

Also I've never placed this card in a machine, so there's the possibility that it could be bad, kudzu doesn't seem to detect it (can it even probe non-PNP hardware like windows does?)

additional info on the card:

- has a UMC UM9003F chipset
- probably made by a company called GTC

Thanks for any help.

[je_fro]

google it to find out about the jumpers, then go here:

http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/Ethernet-HOWTO-4.html

I use lots of isa cards...3c509 ones, especially.

[Brink]

I'll keep that in mind for when i get to the driver, but I'm having absolutely no luck with the jumpers, and google is only so helpful.

[banzaikai]

Howdy.

The 9003F is listed as an NE-2000 compatible card, so you should just modprobe ne2000 and see what happens.

Can you get the MAC address off the card? The first six digits (hex digits, that is) provide the manufacturer number, which may be referenced at: http://www.cavebear.com/CaveBear/Ethernet/vendor.html

Jumpers:

The I1/2 are most likely the I/O address. A typical NE2K goes something like this:

I1 I2 Ports
on on 300-31F
off on 320-33F
on off 340-35F
off off 360-37F

I'm guessing that the M1, 2, and 3 jumpers are for shared-memory settings (as with the NE2K+ chipset), and should be at the default setting.

The W/N jumper may be for "1Waitstate/Normal" for mobos using the Chips&Technology chipsets, which had a timing problem using NE2K and compatibles. I'd try it at N first, since I'm sure the ISA clock is far slower than what your CPU and mobo can keep up with.

The above settings are from the actual NE2K, and may not pertain to your card. It could be that the card is already set to address 300, and the jumpers bump it up to 320,340,and 360 (or 200/20/40/60). So, this'll take some playing around to see what pops up. The best way to do this is to find a diagnostic program that'll do a port scan for cards. Then play with the I/O jumpers until your card pops up at 300-31F (or whatever you have free). Then set to an unused IRQ. Then start your kudzu or modprobe ne2000 to see if your card is seen. Note that if you choose 360-37F, it overlaps the 378-37F address of your LPT1 port (parallel printer)!

Hope this helps...

banzai