On 1/24/21 4:02 PM, Andrew Easton wrote: ...> The boot_config(8) man page reads:
The Ethernet card is not detected at boot because the kernel configuration does not match the physical hardware configuration, e.g. wrong IRQ in OpenBSD/i386. [...] UKC> find ne [...] 25 ne1 at isa0 port 0x300 size 0 iomem -1 iosiz 0 irq 10 drq -1 drq2 -1 flags 0x0 [...] ne1 seems to match the configuration except it uses IRQ 5 instead of IRQ 10. [...] UKC> change ne1 [...] irq [10] ? 5
...
The sentence "ne1 seems to match the configuration except it uses IRQ 5 instead of IRQ 10" has two ways of being interpreted: (1) the kernel configuration is using IRQ 5 and (2) the hardware configuration is using IRQ 5.
...ISA devices and drivers are complicated and stunningly inconsistent. IF the developers want to improve this, I would suggest something maybe more along the lines of: "The ne(4) driver recognizes a card at port 300 as ne1, but expects an IRQ of 10. If your card is actually at port 300, IRQ 5, you can adjust the driver as follows:" [...example...] Realistically, however, you aren't likely to be very successful with OpenBSD on an ISA machine; the people who know how to deal with ISA cards try not to, and the hw that /requires/ them is very slow for modern OpenBSD. (I recently gave up on an old, faithful P90 I've used for many years because it just took too long to just boot, and even it has PCI slots where NICs "just work"). Also, you are generally better off moving the HW to match OpenBSD's expectations rather than moving OpenBSD to the HW, as that will make your next upgrade discouraging. I'm almost more of the opinion that this section should be removed rather than tuned up -- I don't think ISA cards should be encouraged, I don't know that hw that can use ISA cards should be encouraged, I certainly wouldn't recommend changing the OS to match the card (though yes, sometimes it is required if you really insist on using hardware that requires it). A lot can be written about how to use an ne(4) ISA card with OpenBSD, a lot can be written about ep(4), ec(4), we(4), but they can all be summed up as, "here's a nickel kid, get yourself a less old computer". Nick.
