FDDI on plan9

[jmk@plan9.bell-labs.com jmk@plan9.bell-labs.com]

On Tue, 19 Nov 1996, Larry Stefani wrote:

> >>drivers for some popular PCI FDDI cards... Fast Ethernet cards would >>be nice too, but FDDI is of course much better :)
> 
> Hi Brandon,
> 
> Since I work on THE leading PCI FDDI card, I was intrigued by your
> posting.  I know nothing of plan9, but I found your message while doing
> an AltaVista search on FDDI and PCI.  The Linux 2.0.24 and later kernels
> have a DEFXX.C driver I wrote for Digital's FDDI PCI and EISA
> controllers.  Do you have any idea of how easy it would be to port this
> driver to plan9?
> 
> All of the Linux code is downloadable today, and I can certainly help
> you technically if this was something you were interested in working on.
> Regards.  - Larry 
> +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
> | Larry Stefani                          stefani@lkg.dec.com           |
> | Networks Engineering                   Digital Equipment Corporation |
> | WWW: http://www.networks.digital.com/                                |
> | FTP: ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/adapters/			       |
> |                     Comments are mine, of course...                  |
> +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
> 

While the two systems are different enough that 'porting' a driver is not
really an option, given a working Linux driver as an example and a Digital
technical reference manual (usually excellent), writing a Plan 9 driver is
not hard. It is, however, best to start with the reference manual and only
look at Linux source if problems arise, it can be too confusing otherwise.

Is there much interest in FDDI? I thought most people skipped it and went
from Ethernet to Fast Ethernet like we did. Much cheaper. I have Brazil drivers
for Digital Fast EtherWORKS PCI 10/100 adapter (DE-500-X), 3Com 3C595 and the
Intel EtherExpress PRO/100B. You can probably buy a hub and half a dozen
PCI Fast Ethernet cards for the cost of 2 dual-attach PCI FDDI interfaces.

If, however, you have a requirement for FDDI then the Digital card looks like
a good choice.

--jim