On Wed, Dec 24, 2003 at 01:23:03PM -0800, JS wrote:

> After installing everything, I then configured it for
> the Dlink NIC and rebooted.  However, I am still
> getting the watchdog timeout error during the boot and
> if I try to use the card.  Is there anything else I
> could try to get the card working?

can you check your card and see what it's
revision level is ? you should be able to see
some kind of "rev x.x" printed on the card.

problem is dlink keeps the same name for that
network card but does change components so you
can have two DLink cards with the same name,
but with very different components on the card,
like Realtek ones which are known to behave quite
poorly in performance (and as networks cards in
fact.. what a pity)

i had wrote a patch to fix my own dlink 530tx
trouble (i added a reset of the card just after
the "watchdog timeout" message being printed)
but miod (senior developer from the openbsd
project) contacted me about it and he told me
that the trouble did come from the PHY of that
card and that he had wrote code to take care of
this. i know there is a least one person that
reported me the reset patch was working, that
was a few monthes ago (if you look in the netbsd
mailing lists you will find it, i had posted
changes to do) but if miod is right (and he is
very probably) my fix might not work with your
card. i have been having watchdog timeout errors
with the 530TX cards but that did diseappear
since openbsd 3.3 and netbsd post 1.6.1 but
we might have another revision of that card
with troubles again :/

> unzipped and installed the .tgz files. However, when I
> booted under the new kernel but with the old files,
> other hardware was recognized better.  Because of
> this, I am wondering, can I use the new kernel but
> keep the old files?

you can. usually, using a newer kernel or a
current one above a previous netbsd doesn't
break but some stuff might not work properly
or work at all because of changes to the newer
kernel. keeping userland in sync with the kernel
is usually a better thing but it's your machine
after all ;)

if there is a fix for that watchdog timeout, it
will be found in the kernel. so you can install
a 1.6.1 userland and then install a current kernel
and see how it behaves. if the problem is still
there, i'll give you a patch to apply to sources
to see if it works better. if that also fails,
we'll have to look at openbsd's code or freebsd
one where a fix might be :)

-- 
Gilbert Fernandes