On 18 Nov 1997, Ben Pfaff wrote:
> Chuma Agbodike <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > Why is it being used as a 16 bit card. Or is it running as a 32 bit ?
>
> >From /usr/doc/HOWTO/Ethernet-HOWTO.gz:
>
> Various clone manufacturers have started making PCI ne2000 clones
> based on the RealTek 8029 chip. These cards are also supported by the
> linux ne2000 driver for v2.0 kernels. However you only benefit from
> the faster bus interface, as the card is still using the age-old
> ne2000 driver interface.
Exactly, this says you don't need to configure for the PCI devices,
because it will use the generic ne2000 driver, which is of course listed
as the ne2000 driver. So exept maybe for the advantage of the faster pci
bus speed, you get no real improvement over standard isa ne2000's. This is
AFAIK not the drivers fault, but just plain hardware shortcomings.
But:
> Later in the file:
>
> Recently two other PCI NE2000 clones have appeared, those being cards
> based upon the Winbond 89C940 chip, and the Compex ReadyLink-2000
> cards. The ne2000 driver in v2.0.x doesn't know about the PCI ID's of
> these cards, and hence won't detect them without an explicit I/O
> address being given at boot. (See the FAQ section on NE2000 cards for
> more details on dealing with an undetected PCI card.) Support for
> these additional cards has already been written and will appear in a
> v2.1.x kernel sometime in the near future, so that they will then be
> autodetected as well.
>
> If you have a NE2000 PCI card that is not a RealTek, Winbond, or
> Compex ReadyLink, please contact the maintainer of the NE2000 driver
> as listed in /usr/src/linux/MAINTAINERS. That way the ID of your card
> can also be added to the driver.
There is a patch available that adds the necessary information to the
kernel. The debian linux kernel-{source,image,headers} maintainer, Herbert
Xu has already applied that patch to the kernel source and thus the
problems described above do not apply to the debianized kernel-source.
It works fine for my (winbond) pci ne2000 card.
Hurray for debian!
Cheers,
Joost
ps: The only nice thing about these pci ne2000 cards is that you get less
hassle with interrupts. Next time I'm getting either an isa (cheaper) or a
busmastering capable (better) card.
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