> 
> Dear Alpha People,
>    I have (or will have once my multia gets back from the repair shop) a
> Multia and would like to have two eithernet cards attached to it - one to
> the local LAN at home and the other to the ADSL line for internet access.
> 
>    It seems that the Multia has one PCI slot but it is taken up with the
> NCR SCSI card (at least that is what I think) and the arangement is such
> that a regular PCI card would not fit in the case.
> 
>    There are two PCMCIA slots and while PCMCIA is not supported by NetBSD
> offically I recall there are some code available for the I386 port which
> support PCMCIA (particularly for note book computers).
> 
>    Do the PCMCIA slots suffer from the same problems of the 16MB limit
> with ISA DMA or would it be reasonably easy to make drivers for the PCMCIA
> slots for an eithernet PCMCIA card?
> 
> johnh...
> 
>
A possibly easier way to do this (I know this is not what you asked, but
I'm just offering a suggestion) would be to use a PCI-to-PCI bridge installed
in the PCI slot.  We have some PCI-to-PCI bridge evaluation boards from DEC
kicking around here, and I'd bet that they will sell one or two to anyone
for a modest price (try calling Digital Semiconductor or your local
Digital Semiconductor rep).  I don't know whether current firmware resolves
the issues that some Alpha systems have had with PCI-to-PCI bridging and
whether it will just work right out of the box or whether you'll need to hack
a little.  Even if you do need to hack a little I'm sure it would be less
painful than the PCMCIA stuff.  I know that old firmware on the AXPpci33
doesn't configure PCI-to-PCI bridge chips correctly.  I have new firmware
now (thanks, Matt, for pointing out that an AXPpci33 is _not_ a Multia)
and will soon know whether they now configure bridges correctly.  I have
no idea whether any of the bridge configuration problems ever did or still
do affect the Multia.  Assuming that either the firmware works or that you
hack the bus init code to program the bridge chips, the use of PCI-to-PCI
bridging is straightforward, at least for a single level of bridging.
-ben