I have now been working with my installed NetBSD 1.5 on my PowerMac
6500/300 for a while.  I am using it exclusively as a server;
telnetting into the machine for everything I do unless there is a
problem. I am curious about how I will upgrade when the next official
release comes out, but that's not why I'm writing.  I have some
questions about using peripherals.

network card drivers: I am using a Farralon EtherTx 10/100 PCI
ethernet card in one on of my pci slots. I recently bought a Linksys 8
port DSL/CABLE router, to replace a 1 port one I had trouble with. It
also replaced a 10base10 hub, as it also functions as an 8 port 10/100
switch.  It has nevered worked at 100baseT speed with the new device
as far as I can tell. I would like it to work at 100baseT. Last night
I was busy compiling (trying to get all the pieces of Jade, docbook,
OpenSP to work) when I lost networking - everything just hung. My
telnet connections died. dmesg yeilds -

de0: enabling 10baseT port de0 at pci0 dev 13 function 0 
de0: interrupting at irq 23 de0: 21143 [10-100Mb/s] pass 4.1 
de0: address 00:00:c5:53:3b:dd 
de0: enabling 10baseT port 
de0: autosense failed: cable problem?  
de0: enabling 10baseT port 
de0: enabling 10baseT port
de0: enabling 10baseT port 
de0: enabling 10baseT port 

- Since I originally set it up wiht a 10baseT connection to my inhouse
network, I'm wondering if I need to change a network setting, if I
need to update the driver, if I need to install a different driver,
and how would I do it. How do I diagnose the problem.

video: I currently have a ATI Pro video card in my other PCI slot -
I'm not using it. It was designed to work with the ATI Xclaim TV tuner
and accepts various s-video and NTSC inputs. Has anyone used these for
video or image capture. I would just assume run the NetBSD device
headless and get decent X server software to run on my iMac after I
upgrade it to OS 10 in a couple of months. ( the free M/IX with twm is
way to slow unless I configured things very very badly.) I would like
to take advantage of the video tools by using the devices functions
except for driving a monitor.

Now for really reaching and throwing out a question, where I'd be
surprised to get an answer due to what I believe is the oddity of my
set up and the relative limited number of people using NetBSD. Still
if there is someone else on the planet who has tried I'd love to hear
from them.

serial port, and midi drivers: while I will want to have the serial
connection to my iMac, most of the time I won't be using the serial
connection. I do have an Opcode Midi translator - which is a serial
device with a switch to either pass the serial through or send it to
the MIDI interface. I have a midi piano and was wondering if anyone
could give me some ideas on how to configure the devices. I always
wanted to try lilypond and some of the various Unix tools for playing
and printing music.


-- 
Josh Kuperman
josh@ssimr.com
http://www.ssimr.com