At 20:34 -0500 07/07/2006, Jonathan A. Kollasch wrote:
>On Wed, Jul 05, 2006 at 04:30:00PM -0700, John Klos wrote:

>>  I'm trying to get a 4 port Adaptec AN-6944A/TX ethernet card working on a
>>  macppc machine (which is a Motorola Starmax). In dmesg I see:

>Something (hardware, firmware, kernel) is not handling the PCI bus
>properly.

The x500 series of Macintoshes, which are different models but same 
generation as the StarMax, have a definite firmware bug with regard 
to properly handling PCI-PCI Bridges.

That's the 7500 through the 9600 and related clones.   The symptom in 
those cases is that PPBs more than one layer deep cause hangs during 
initialization.  There are several details and exceptions, but that's 
the gist.   It seems likely that the Starmax would have related 
bug(s).

How do I know it isn't hardware?   Well, the problem could be in 
Bandit (CPU bus--PCI bridge), I suppose (but PPB hierarchies should 
be handled in firmware or software,  not in hardware).   However, it 
definitely isn't the PPB.   I  know this because I replaced the DEC 
21052 in the Umax S900 (Mac Clone) with four different pin compatible 
PPB chips (desoldered and soldered-in 160 pin QFPs) without the 
symptoms changing.

It wasn't an OS issue because the hang occurs before anything has 
loaded from disk.   It's purely a firmware driven issue.

So I would wager that the issue in this same-generation machine is a 
firmware issue.

The ROM revision in the x500 machines and clones is $77D.28F2.

Jeff Walther