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Topic: 3Com Etherlink 3c900B-TPO driver, problems making it work

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Di4l

Group: Members
Posts: 8
Joined: Dec. 2006

Posted: Dec. 14 2006,07:51

Hello all,

First off, I am new to Linux, so please, forgive my ignorance.

I have a small machine (i586 75 MHz, 92 MB RAM) with 3 hard disks. The first one in which I have a Debian installation of DSL is 810 MB in size, the second one with 2 GB and the 3rd of 250 MB. The system also has a 3Com Etherlink 3c900B-TPO PCI network card. The drivers for the card are not found on the system, so I have had to download the sources from 3Com driver download. The actual link to the source code is this.

After installing the necessary packages into my DSL (gcc and kernel sources), I have succesfully compiled the source code into the object file 3c90x.o.

Following the instructions provided with the source code I have proceeded as follows to install the driver:

Code Sample

1. Copied the object file into /lib/modules/2.4.x/net (the x there is a number I can't remember)
2. Executed /sbin/depmod -a (no errors prompted)
3. Edit the /etc/modutils/aliases to add the following alias: alias eth0 3c90x.
4. Reboot the machine.

After booting, my network card is still not found by the system. At first I thought it could be because it is a PCI rather than ISA, but I discarded that problem as the graphics card and USB card I have are also PCI and are perfectly detected.

Since the above procedure did not work, I tried another command I read on the same installation instructions document from the driver source code. In there it said that in order to install run-time modules, one had to execute insmod. So I did and I got an "ini_module" error message. I can't rememeber the message text.

I was thinking the following. In the installation instructions it said you had to modify the /etc/modules.conf file to add the "alias eth0 3c90x" line, but when I opened the file for editing, I found a comment in it saying NOT to modify that file as it is automatically generated. Instead, one should edit the files in /etc/modutils/. it also said to read the manpage for modules-update, but I could not find that "manpage" anywhere.

To tell you the truth I did not check that after reboot the alias line for eth0 was inserted into the modules.conf file. My question is, do I have to edit myself that file or did I edit the correct one (/etc/modutils/aliases)?. Do I have to do something else I am missing?

Any other suggestions to make the driver work would be apreciated. Thanks a lot,

Di4l

Di4l

Group: Members
Posts: 8
Joined: Dec. 2006

Posted: Dec. 14 2006,08:13

By the way... the lspci did not show the network card.

Di4l

^thehatsrule^ Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 3275
Joined: July 2006

Posted: Dec. 14 2006,15:16

if lspci doesn't see the card, then trying out the modules won't help you. If its not broken, you could check dmesg for irq problems

or maybe you need to disable power management things or pass something like pci=assign-buses (sp?) to the kernel on boot.

Di4l

Group: Members
Posts: 8
Joined: Dec. 2006

Posted: Dec. 15 2006,09:24

Thank you ^thehatsrule^. You have just reminded me that the ini_module message I got when executed insmod was something about cheking IRQ settings.

The problem is that I think the card is plug'n'play, I do not know how to change IRQ settings as it has no jumpers. Can I do that in the BIOS menu?

The other questions is about dmesg. and the boot options. I am a newbie to Linux and do not know what dmesg is for, or how to use, plus, I do not think I would know what to pass to the pci parameter.

I'll play around a little bit and see what I get. I though of moving the card to another slot. At the moment I have the video and usb card next to each other, then an empty slot and then the network card. I thought that maybe they all had to be "together".

Thanks,

Di4l

^thehatsrule^ Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 3275
Joined: July 2006

Posted: Dec. 15 2006,14:47

You could check your BIOS I suppose... and you could try moving the slots.

dmesg is a terminal command (ie you can use ATerminal). You can check the wiki page on cheatcodes to see how you can use your bootloader to pass additional params.

5 replies since Dec. 14 2006,07:51

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