On Thu, 3 Jun 1999, Simon Waite wrote:

> yes I did mean 192.1.1.69 :)
> Its my own home network :) Back from the days I didnt know better :)

OK, not that it really matters since it's your home network, AFAIK.

> My board has got AUI and thin ethernet, I'm using thin ethernet ATM.

OK...

> BTW, I'm getting only 30Kbytes/s transferspeed between my windows box
> and the mac ... is this normal for a Nubus card to transfer data a such
> a slow rate?

I don't think so.  I'd think that any Ethernet card should be able to do
the theoretical maximum, limited by practical considerations, such as bus
speed.  Again, I'm no guru, but I can't see anyone designing an EtherNIC
that's slower than the built-in serial ports (OK, externally clocked).

> >> I've got a Dynaport E/II nubus card in my Mac IIci which works find with
> >> MacOS 7.5
> >> I belive its a 8390 based card (Because there is a big chip marked
> DP8390DN
> >> :)
> >> The 1.4 Kernel recognises this correctly as ae0, and prints its ethernet
> MAC
> >> address

OK, my chip is marked DP8390CN.

> >> Unfortunatly any attempt at upping the interface halts the kernal.

To which I wrote:

> >I haven't attempted to up the interface on mine.  I've already got
> >on-board ethernet working, and this extra NIC is for my gateway/IP-NAT
> >setup.  On this type of card, the multi-DIP switch on the circuit board
> >needs to be positioned to use either the twisted-pair connection or the
> >thick transceiver connection.  However, no amount of trying now or years
> >ago ever got the twisted-pair connection working on the cards that I used,
> >and so I'm waiting on a transceiver.  That's the only way I ever got one
> >working.

OK, here's an update on what I wrote above: I got the AUI-TP transceiver,
connected it, and tested it under MacOS.  It worked fine.  But then when
I booted into NetBSD, my machine hung after xdm brought up the login
screen.  I couldn't get any response to pings on the built-in Ethernet
interface either.  The only difference was that the card now had an active
link - it had been sitting unobtrusively in the machine before, recognized
by ae0.  I rebooted, and everything worked fine - no hangs, no problems.

> >> To further help identification it is marked:
> >>
> >> P/N 9800102-00 REV:E
> >> S/N H 20920272
> >>
> >> and also
> >>
> >> s/n 03081F

Here's more information that anyone probably needs, from different places
on the card:

 ETHERPORT IINL, EXCELAN, S/N 152502, Copyright 1989
 DP8390CN, NS32490CN
 SYNOPTICS, 104-001-E, 8909
 P/N: 9800115-00 REV: A
 D/C: 89343
 1420059-00 REV A

My /var/run/dmesg.boot still reports:

ae0 at nubus0 slot d: EtherPort IIN, 16KB memory
ae0: Ethernet address <yadda yadda yada>

ifconfig gives me:

ae0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        media: Ethernet manual
        inet 192.168.1.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255

For my sn0 interface, no "media:" line is given.  I'm not knowledgeable
enough to say why.  My best shot in the dark would be that it refers to
the current setting (manually, using the on-card switch) of using the
"Ethernet" connection, instead of the twisted-pair connection.  The two
settings are marked ENET and LNET respectively on the card.

> >> I have tryed all the kernels in the mac 68K arch dir, as well as the
> colour
> >> based kernels
> >> all behave in the same way (well the ones that boot that is)
> >>
> >> I have tryed the card in all three Nubus slots with no change in results

FWIW, I'm still using the generic kernel, and my EtherNIC hasn't moved
from slot D.

> >> The command I use to up the interface is:
> >>
> >> ifconfig ae0 inet 192.1.1.69 netmask 255.255.255.0

I wrote:

> >Well, I plan to get mine working under MacOS first before I play around
> >with it under NetBSD.  I'm not sure what will happen if I try to ifconfig
> >when I know that that card isn't cabled up and possibly set to the
> >non-functional connection.  I could try it from here, but given your
> >experience I'd rather wait 'till I get home in case it goes awry.  Doing
> >an ifconfig on an interface not in use will initialize it, I think.
> >Perhaps this is what is smoking your kernel - your card might be confusing
> >the kernel with its init routines or something.

Update on above: After getting it working with MacOS, I telnetted in (on
sn0) from my PPC machine to bring up the ae0 interface, with: 

# ifconfig ae0 inet bouncer netmask 255.255.255.0

bouncer is defined in my /etc/hosts file as:

192.168.1.1             bouncer                 bouncer.homenet.net

This worked for me.  No kernel hysterics resulted.  I can 'ping bouncer'
with no problems.  Note that I am not using "bouncer" in my rc.conf (or
/etc/myname).  Once I get everthing else working (i.e., IP-NAT), I'll
probably do that.  Right now, *both* interfaces are hooked into ports on
my hub.

I hope this helps somehow.

/*======================================================================
"Don't die wondering..."                http://www.cldc.howard.edu/~cpg
                                              email: cpg@scs.howard.edu
chris out-              Christopher P. Gill
  peace.        C.L.D.C. Senior System Operator (Ret.)
======================================================================*/