Subject: IF_NE.C NNOVELL 2000 ETHERNET DRIVER TROUBLES
To: None <current-users@sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu>
From: Brian Buhrow <buhrow@cats.ucsc.edu>
List: current-users
Date: 02/07/1994 09:05:40
	I am running NetBSD-current on a 386-25 with a Diamond flowers
Industries Novell 2000 clone.  Up to last week, I have been using the
if_ne.c ethernet driver with no trouble at all.  When I went to build the
newest kernel, (Fromsource about January 28, 1994), I discovered that when
the system wanted to fire up the network and actually use it, the machine
would hang.  The card probing went fine and the ethernet address of the
card would be reported.  The fsck at the beginning of the boot process
would complete and, as soon as the message, "starting network" went on the
screen, everything ground to a halt.  In an effort to trace the trouble, I
retrieved the latest if_ne.c from the sun-lamp source tree (February 2,
1994) and tried again.  Same problem.  Then I tried putting the code I'd
been using from October 1993 into the new kernel.  Works like a charm.  
Then, this morning, when I went to get the latest if_ne.c from sun-lamp, I
notice that if_ne.c doesn't exist in /usr/src/sys/arch/i386/isa/if_ne.c
anymore.  Was support for the NE2000 moved to a different file name?  Was
it removed entirely?  My vote would be to use the older sources of the
working driver and simply copy the old source to the evolving tree as it
evolves.  It has proved to be a work-horse driver for me and I don't see
the need to drop support for this popular Ethernet card.
	If someone knows the story of this driver, please share.
-thanks
-Brian

------------------------------------------------------------------------------