Dear friends,
I finally got my NIC card and Linux "happily married"! ;) Well at least
during the "honeymoon" (well I only tested pinging thus far! I hope I am
not celebrating too soon... :-o Anyways it *is* a step forward!)
I would like to thank everyone out there for their support. Without you
guys this would have been a nightmare!
For those of you still struggling on a particular problem... HANG ON
THERE! ;-) It will eventually work! :-)
*** you can skip the remainder of this message if you are not
interested in knowing what might have caused my 3C905-TX not to work ***
Just that you know (and for the sake of other people experiencing similar
problems) I will briefly describe what I think could have been the
problems... (are you seating down? ;-) )
I think in my case it was a combination of hardware and software problems:
Hardware
--------
1. When I initially setup Debian Linux the twisted pair cable I was using
was damaged. I remember changing cables with another workstation and that
still not working. The thing is (and I read it somewhere later on) that
if you change cables you are best rebooting or initializing the card in
some way. Because of this intial cable swap test I never considered the
cable a problem anymore (until I got really "desperate" about things still
not working!
;-) )
2. In my "desperate" mood ;-) I also swaped network cards (exactly the
same card) with another workstation (NT). The card that used to be on
the Linux box works fine on NT so I don't think that was the problem at
all though I haven't been able (or willing) to isolate that and find if it
was a problem under Linux.
Software
--------
1. Get the LATEST stable driver that SUITS your setup! For example a
particular version of the driver (not necessarily the latest) might work
better if you run your network at 10Mbps while another version (probably a
later one) work best if you run at 100Mbps. Also the kernel that you
currently are using might affect in many ways the driver.
2. ENSURE you have the proper driver configuration! I think this is
probably the easiest and yet most common reason for things not working! I
think this was (in addition to the cable) the single most important reason
for the card not to work. The default options were 0,,12 and what made it
work for me was 6 (I guess I thought it was safe to just accept the
defaults but it is not always the case). In any case I did upgrade to the
latest driver so I haven't tested the default driver (the one that comes
with 2.0.29 kernel) with the new configuration.
ADVICE if you run into problems/difficulties making things work:
---------------------------------------------------------------
a) Ensure that you have a driver that works for your particular hardware
(check with other people on the list for this). More importantly ENSURE
that you have the right CONFIGURATION for your hardware. For example, in
my case (and eventhough again I have not been able to isolate whether
that was *the* cause of the problem) I was using the driver's default
configuration which was NOT suitable for my setup;
b) If everything else fails, CHECK your hardware!!! (i.e. NIC and cable)
(particularly if you find out that other people under the same software
configuration than you made it to work).
Ok I hope this is not too confusing... =8-)
I still have a few error messages on my Linux system I would like to get
rid off. I will post other messages addressing this later on.
Once again THANKS everyone!
David
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