How to use dc network driver in FreeBSD?

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

I have two network cards, both of which run using the dc driver. However, come system install time, I get an error saying that the driver could not map memory to the card.

How do I load the driver for these cards? Do I need to specify the IRQs for the cards? Also, when I run ifconfig, will the cards be eth0 and eth1, or will they be dc0 or dc1?

[demetrius]

The cards should be dc0 and dc1. I'm not sure about the problem you're having, my Linksys works fine in FreeBSD 4.5 (4.4 was fine too). There's some compatibility info here (http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=dc&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+4.5-RELEASE) with a bit of diagnostic info as well. Hope it helps.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

I ran across that link in the site. I'm not sure, either... Even when I had just one NIC, It didn't work properly. Here's the info on my NICS (from Linux dmesg, I'll try and post BSD dmesg, too...):

Linux Tulip driver version 0.9.15-pre9 (Nov 6, 2001)
PCI: Enabling device 00:09.0 (0084 -> 0087)
PCI: Found IRQ 9 for device 00:09.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 9 with 00:04.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 9 with 00:04.3
eth0: Lite-On PNIC-II rev 37 at 0xa400, 00:A0:CC:E8:49:C8, IRQ 9.
PCI: Enabling device 00:0c.0 (0014 -> 0017)
PCI: Assigned IRQ 11 for device 00:0c.0
eth1: ADMtek Comet rev 17 at 0x9800, 00:04:5A:72:F5 :DB, IRQ 11.

I have an ASUS K7V-133c mobo with a VIA (82cxxx or something) chipset, too if that matters...

When I am presented with the initial Kernel fullscreen interactive mode at install, what network module do I need to specify?

[ 01 April 2002: Message edited by: Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379 ]

[demetrius]

All you should need to do is deselect everything but the dc driver in the network section of the kernel configuration.

[Blackknight]

The GENERIC kernel supports most NICs right out of the box, if not you can recompile it for your NIC.

I had a dc based card in my FreeBSD system, and it worked fine. Never had a single problem.

[freebsd]

Forget what other said and here's what I say: Just disable anything you don't use from BIOS Setup (i.e. serial port, USB or IDE secondary), then assign a unique IRQ to each PCI slot explicitly. If you have spare slot, find out which slot is sharing IRQ with AGP (usually 1st or last slot), leave that slot alone.

dc device is in GENERIC so you don't need to recompile a kernel to get your NICs to work, though recompile a custom kernel is suggested later on, but that's a different story for now.

BTW, dc is the most reliable and low-end NIC device in *BSDs.

[ 02 April 2002: Message edited by: freebsd ]

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

It still keeps on saying it can't map ports/memory. Could it be my motherboard? It may be doing some funny things with assigning IRQs...

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Originally posted by freebsd:
<STRONG>Forget what other said and here's what I say: Just disable anything you don't use from BIOS Setup (i.e. serial port, USB or IDE secondary), then assign a unique IRQ to each PCI slot explicitly. If you have spare slot, find out which slot is sharing IRQ with AGP (usually 1st or last slot), leave that slot alone.

</STRONG>

Okay... I did exactly what you said... turned off USB and both COM ports, and I explicitly assigned IRQs to my PCI slots. I made sure that both of the NICs used IRQs that weren't even being shared by anything else. I still get the same error I've been getting:

dc0:Couldn't map ports/memory. attach returned 6

What does it mean if it returns six? I think if I knew what that error meant, I could fix it...

[demetrius]

Here's the only actual resolution to the problem that I found in a search on www.google.com/bsd (http://www.google.com/bsd) :
http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=113091+0+archive/2000/freebsd-hardware/20000910.freebsd-hardware

Hope that works for you.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

AHAH! Plug and Play OS support... I didn't even realize it was on...

&lt;edit&gt; I turned off the plug and play support, and now it works like a dream! Thanks for all of the help!&lt;/edit&gt;

[ 09 April 2002: Message edited by: Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379 ]