Subject: Re: EtherM and power cuts
To: None <david@infotrek.demon.co.uk>
From: Mark Brinicombe <amb@physig.ph.kcl.ac.uk>
List: port-arm32
Date: 11/27/1996 18:59:39
On Wed, 27 Nov 1996, David Croft wrote:

> 
> (Arrgh! I keep having power cuts! And now fsck has had to delete both
> xconsole and also my pine address book, upon which I am rather dependant!)

what can I say, regular backups and UPS's are my solution to this sort of 
prob.
 
> I've just replaced my EtherB 10base2 ethernet card with a combo
> 10baseT/10base2 EtherM card. It's from Atomwide/ANT. Is support planned
> for this? I can't recall seeing anything about it (indeed, I've never
> heard of an EtherM before).

Yes support is planned as soon as I get one out of ANT. Talking to then
at the show they appears reasonable so hopefully I will have one to play 
with soon.

> In the meantime I'm using an Ether3 10baseT card, which keeps saying "ea0:
> device timeout" - should this be worrying me?

yes/no depends on the network.
The currently ea0 driver uses a watchdog timer to force a reset if it 
looks like the controller has hung up.

The watchdog timer is set to either 30 secs on 60 secs (cannot remeber of 
the top of my head) and is reset every rx packet.
If you are on a new with very little traffic then it is possible for
the timer to timeout between receiving packets (I used to get this on my 
net at home) After 1 time it you will not get another until another
packet is received and the timer is reset.
If you are on a busy network and would expec the driver to receive lots 
of packets then it may be a problem with the driver.

Cheers,
				Mark


> -- 
> David Croft                     mailto:david@infotrek.demon.co.uk
> Infotrek Software Developments    http://www.infotrek.demon.co.uk/
> 

Mark Brinicombe				amb@physig.ph.kcl.ac.uk
Research Associate			http://www.ph.kcl.ac.uk/~amb/
Department of Physics			tel: 0171 873 2894
King's College London			fax: 0171 873 2716