Subject: Re: 3Com 905B-TX - driver for 1.3.2 sought
To: None <lucio@proxima.alt.za>
From: Feico Dillema <dillema@acm.org>
List: tech-kern
Date: 12/07/1998 20:56:18
Your message dated: Mon, 07 Dec 1998 17:18:12 +0200
>As the subject, says, has anyone back-ported the -current driver, which 
>ostensibly (kern-pr6088) handles the new board, to 1.3.2.  I have 
>downloaded the if_ep_pci.c module, but the changes in there are too 
>daunting.
>
>And of course I need it yesterday :-(
>
>Sadly, my choice may turn out to be to install FreeBSD, not that I 
>mind, but I'm more comfortable with NetBSD.

Hi,

I made an attempt some time ago to backport the ex driver (or actually a
beta of it) to 1.3.2. I spent a few days on it, trying to get it to work.
I more or less managed, but as I'm no kernel hacker whatsoever (really!)
I din't manage to track down a problem I encountered. I got as far as 
booting a 1.3.2 kernel with an ex driver and being able to use it for
a while. However, it would generally core-dump on me after some time
when it got a bit busy (e.g. ftp a really big file). I gave up, as I was
able to put another ethernetcard in my machine and I didn't have time
nor the skills to figure this one out. (I don't even dare to tell in 
public what I needed to do finally to get it to compile ;-{ )

I can tell you that what I did was rather simple, I copied the ex
driver sources into a 1.3.2 source tree anbd tried to compile.
Everytime the compiler complained about a missing bit, I searched
for it in -current and added/merged that too. I repeated this untill 
it basically build. If I remember correctly, apart from the ex stuff,
I needed (some of) the sys/dev/mii from -current, and some busspace
routines from sys/arch/i386/i386/machdep.c. (?) I think.

I'm not up to this task I think (not without help). (I'm not a tech-kern
list because I'm a kernel-expert, but because I'm not ;-} ). Maybe
you feel like doing this now after my status report, or maybe somebody
else now feels  it's a trivial task for him/her to do this backporting.

Feico.