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Installing Slackware 8.0 on an 486. Setup doesn't find CD-drive. Update: ISA NIC not recognized.

E

Elledan

Banned
I"ve got this (ancient) 486 (DX, 66 MHz), with 16 MB RAM, 420 MB HD.

Setup goes fine, until I try to select a source medium. It doesn't find the CD-drive, even though it recognizes it during Init. NFS doesn't work either because setup chokes on the (NE2000 compatible) NIC (ISA).

Any ideas are appreciated.
 


<< ne2k *shudder* >>

Yeah... it's an old ISA NIC I found somewhere in a dark corner. I'm not entirely certain that it's even NE2000 compliant. Could be NE1000 as well.

Anyway, the NIC doesn't work with SuSe 6.3 🙁

It's a so-called legacy ISA card, thus I've set the IRQ and I/O using jumpers. It still doesn't work though...

BTW, this NIC did work with Freesco. Perhaps I should check the floppy with the config files on it.
 
Boot up freesco and check out to see what the card is recognized as. That might work. Personally, if I have to use ISA cards I use 3com. I have a few of them laying around and I even get them to work on occassion. I stay away from ne2k's because I have heard of nothing but trouble with them. ne2k doesnt mean it is compatible with the original ne2k cards if I remember correctly. The only other big nic chipset that has as many oddities to it is the tulip cards (linksys), but I have never had a problem with those.
 
Hmm... I checked the SYSTEM.CFG file on the Freesco floppy and this is all it says for the NIC:

# [Hardware]
IO0=0x300 #811.1st ethernet card I/O address
IRQ0=5 #812.IRQ line

Now, how does Freesco know which driver to use for the NIC? And why does SuSe Linux not know this?
 


<< Hmm... I checked the SYSTEM.CFG file on the Freesco floppy and this is all it says for the NIC:

# [Hardware]
IO0=0x300 #811.1st ethernet card I/O address
IRQ0=5 #812.IRQ line

Now, how does Freesco know which driver to use for the NIC? And why does SuSe Linux not know this? >>




Ive never used freesco so I dont know much about it. If you boot into it and get a shell you should be able to take a look at the dmesg which may mention which nic it is using (I dont look at linux dmesgs but I know they are harder to look at than what I get with OpenBSD). If freesco uses LKM (Loadable Kernel Modules) you maybe able to look at the modules.conf file to see what it is loading and track that back to see what nic card it belongs to.
 

Ages ago I had troubles with an ISA NIC. The only way I could get it to be detected is if I had it installed and cabled to a powered switch/hub. That is the only way the installer could properly detect it. When it was cabled and hooked up to a hub the auto-probe would install the proper module.

Give that a shot (if you aren't already...)
 


<< Ages ago I had troubles with an ISA NIC. The only way I could get it to be detected is if I had it installed and cabled to a powered switch/hub. That is the only way the installer could properly detect it. When it was cabled and hooked up to a hub the auto-probe would install the proper module.

Give that a shot (if you aren't already...) >>


I"ve got the NIC hooked up to a (powered) hub. It's one of four systems currently connected to the hub.

I think I'll dissect the Freesco floppy a bit more...
 
I booted the system with the Freesco floppy in it, but it appears that the NIC works only partially. Although it receives an IP-address from the DHCP-server, it can neither send or receive any further data. When pinging any of the systems in the LAN, there's a 100% packetloss.

Either the NIC is faulty, or something is wrong with this Freesco floppy...

Ah well, it's already way past my bedtime 😀
 
i wouldnt spend 10 minutes troubleshooting an isa nic .. why .. get a pci nic for 15bucks .. unless you only have isa slots .. ..
-neural
 


<< i wouldnt spend 10 minutes troubleshooting an isa nic .. why .. get a pci nic for 15bucks .. unless you only have isa slots .. ..
-neural >>


That's the problem: it's a 486, so it has only ISA slots (well, this one does).

I'll just get a new one, I guess...

BTW, ISA NIC's are limited to 10 Mbit/s right?
 
Okay, the NIC is functioning now, but so far I can only ping the router, but not any of the other systems on the LAN, nor reach the internet.

More troubleshooting fun 🙂
 
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