NE2000 ISA drivers

Hello folks. I am trying to install a NE2000 ISA card to my Slackware 10 box, but I don't know which module to load. I tried 'modprobe' ing and 'insmod' ing eepro, eepro100, ne2000, ne but they all report errors.

Anyway, ifconfig gives me only the loopback interface and when I try running: ifconfig eth0 192.168.2.1 up I get the 'eth0 is an unknown interface' message which is quite normal without a proper driver loaded.

Google search gave me a bunch of nonsense and blogs so I guess I am aiming at users that had experience with this card. Thank you very much!

Is the card in ISA PnP mode or hardwired resources mode? If it's in hardwired mode, you'll have to specify the IO base address and IRQ line manually to the driver. I'm fairly sure that it is the ne2000 driver that you're supposed to use, in any case.

This is the reason ISA was deprecated...

Thanks for the help Dolda2000 . It think is it is hardwired. Where can I read more about how to specify the IRQ and IO base manually, or can you give me an example of how to do that ? Thanks

First of all I may have been wrong. It's possible that it is the "ne" driver that you should use.

Anyway, the very thing with hardwired ISA cards is that it's impossible to "find out" where its resources are. You have to know it. Sometimes there are jumpers on the board that decide where they are, and sometimes the manufacturer has a special DOS program that can be used to configure the card. Good luck finding that program by now though... =/

Anyway, if you manage to find out where the resources are, the way to pass that information is to run modprobe with something like this:

Code:

---

modprobe ne io=0x330 irq=6

---

That would initialize the IO address to 330 hexadecimally (the leading 0x makes it hexadecimal) and the IRQ line to 6. Commonly you may only have to specify the IO base address, and the driver may be able to probe the IRQ line out of that.

To find out what parameters a module supports, run "modinfo modname", replacing modname with the actual name of the module to look in, such as "modinfo ne".

Again , thanks a lot. I will try to find out the IRQ through BIOS (or even windows). Isn't there a command that will give you the IRQs something like lspci but with additional information ? There are no jumpers on the card.

No, unless the card is in ISA PnP mode, there is no way, whatsoever, to determine its resources via software. Not even the BIOS can do that.

If you have the card installed and working in Windows, then you ought to be able to see what resources Windows has been set to using in its device manager, yes.

Rather than installing Windows, I tracked down the man who sold me the card and he told me that it is an "NE 2000 3/300". He couldn't give me any more information but I presume that IRQ=3 and I/O=0x300, so I will try modprobing ne with those settigns and I hope it will work. Thanks very much Dolda !

It is io=0x300 and IRQ=4. And it works :D . I successfuly modprobed ne and brought up the eth0 interface, however another problem emerged... When the card is in my PC I can't use my COM 2 USRobotics modem in Slackware 10. It won't dial no matter what. So, do I just transfer the modem to COM 1 and get a PS/2 mouse or is there a way to resolve this issue ? :roll:

Hey, I have the config program for DOS that programs the IO address, IRQ, and the like. It MUST be run under DOS or the like. If you don't have access to DOS or a DOS or Windows boot floppy, check out: http://www.theultimatebootcd.com/ . This is a Bootable CD from which you can boot to get a "freedos" boot environment. (It is a multi-purpose tool, also). From there, you can run the setup program. If you haven't already got everything straightened out, I'll upload it or email it to those interested. I DO NOT recommend posting an email address to this forum. Automated computers regularly scan forums for email addresses to add to spam and other mass mailing lists.

The BootCD has support for removable USB Media too, so you can run the config program from a USB CD-ROM or a Flash Drive or External HDD.

Thanks for the information BTW. I was looking for which module to use.
--Aaron

those ne2000 are just about the worst NIC devices ever made. Even if you get it "working", it will always suffer frame drops and other errors.

If it were me, I would get a PCI card of either Intel E100, 3COM 3C905, or a DEC DECchip 21041 or DEC clone by Netgear FA310TX, Linksys NC100. these are all reliable NICs.

cuervo