On Tue, Apr 15, 2003 at 10:35:08AM +0200, Thomas Bohnert wrote:
> 
> > Presumably these are ISA cards?  Not even PnP?
> yes you are right, actually they are.
> 
I prefer them to almost anything else, hang on to them, they're great
for small networks.

> > Compare the options in the configuration
> > software with what the kernel config can provide (almost anything,
> Sorry but these are my first steps with NetBSD, i am a bit disapointed with 
> Linux so i choose to try NetBSD. I will try, and see ;-)) 
> I worst case, do i need to compile a new kernel? Where can i find the settings 
> for the running kernel? 
> 
You'll mostly need to configure the cards on different I/O ports
and IRQs - that's mandatory.  The software I use is 3c5x9cfg.exe
under DOS, downloaded from the 3COM site.  You need to download a
couple of archives that confusingly get extracted and reassembled.
But only the 3c5x9cfg.* files are really needed on a bootable
floppy.

If you'd like to investigate the kernel (I have only a superficial,
but useful knowledge of it), you need to grab the syssrc.tgz (let
me give you a full URL, but it may be slightly inaccurate:

	<ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.6/sources/syssrc.tgz>

you may need to browse around to get the real thing), extract it
(I use { cd /; tar xzvf <wherever>/syssrc.tgz; } ), then look at
/sys/arch/i386/conf for some examples.  config(8) is your friend,
of course.

But I'll be surprised if the kernel can't handle properly configured
3COM cards.  Just remember that ISA does not allow I/O or IRQ
sharing.

++L