Hi Frank.  The basic problem seems to be that the 3c905B-Tx-nm cards
do something funny with their phy hardware such that the ex driver in 1.4
cannot do media selection on the card.  The result is that if the card and
the hub/switch get confused about such things as transmit/receive speeds
and/or half or full duplex modes, there is no way to manipulate the card
via the ifmedia interface.  The card is recognized, but no exphy0 is ever
initialized.  I looked at our driver side by side with the FreeBSD 3.1
driver, which worked, and noted that it seemed to be more particular about
the timing of the data stream shoved at the phy hardware, but could never
figure out what the subttle difference was.  Basically, mii_probe failed to
recognize the phy when it tried to test for its existence with
ex_media_readreg().  This problem seems to be confined to -nm and -m cards.
-Brian
On Jul 27, 11:37pm, Frank van der Linden wrote:
} Subject: Re: Hardware
} On Tue, Jul 27, 1999 at 02:29:15PM -0700, Jeff Northon wrote:
} > I have nearly the complete line of 3COM Ethernet cards. 900, 905 ,905B,
} > 905B-TXNM. I also have the 905 developers book. Looks like the drivers
} > need a rewrite. Anyone interested?
} 
} Huh? What makes you say that the drivers need a rewrite? Are you having
} specific problems with the 'ex' driver? I have the docs as well, and
} used them to write that driver :-)
} 
} - Frank
>-- End of excerpt from Frank van der Linden