Re: [9fans] plan9v3 won't start (PBS...Bad format or I/O error)

[Lucio De Re <lucio@proxima.alt.za>]

On Fri, Jul 14, 2000 at 04:40:29PM +0000, okamoto@granite.cias.osakafu-u.ac.jp wrote:
> 
> >As for the 3c509, I think the problem is two-fold, again.  There must be
> >some etherlink III cards that work with Jim's code out the box.  But the
> >one I have and kenji's don't, they either need to have the medium fixed
> >or they _may_ work with the 2ed drivers.  
> 
> In my case, that card worked very well with 2ed driver.  After forced
> it work under 2ed driver, and on the same machine, I failed to boot from
> with 3ed driver.
> 
I presume that applies to me too, but it's a far shot.  Not today,
unfortunately.  Thinking about it, I'm pretty certain you're correct.

OK, here's some stuff for Jim:

The card's information reads:

	EtherLink III
	(c) 1996  3c509B-[   c   ]
	ASSY: 03-0021-[ 004 ]  REV- [  A  ]

	EA=0060977E4207
	SN=6FX17E4207

where I use [ ... ] to indicate a yellow area.  I seem to recall the "c"
above to be lower case, but I may be mistaken.  It's an ISA, maybe PnP
but not used as such, BNC, AUI and UTP adapter.

On the main chip:

	40-0130-004
	9704S 15880554
	LUCENT 40-01304

> My poor memory is now full of rio sources, and that for ether drivers
> has been flushed out completely.  I'll try it onece more if I could have
> one more terminal for us.  ?
> 
The card worked fine once I changed it from "autoselect" to BNC, although
I cannot prove a thing, because now it refuses to respond to the 3c5x9cfg
program that I used on it.  I would have liked to send Jim the disk copy
of the configuration file :-(  Of course, right now the adapter's working
OK, but I can't try the 3Com config, because I'm using it :-(

Two additional issues: (a) the card has misbehaved once I returned to the
box it is normally installed in: it took a bit of effort to jolt it into
operation under NetBSD (the boot loader refused to find it) after the
3Com config program also failed to see it (it hung).  I seem to have
fixed by juggling (violently) the BNC connector _and_ restarting "rarpd"
on the server :-(  Whether I could configure it now is a moot point.

(b) the card used to operate in autoselect mode until I tried to use it
for Plan 9 3ed.  Then and now (fixed to BNC) it had the peculiarity that
the NetBSD boot loader would only find it once.  If the first boot failed,
the bootloader needed the machine restarted (I can't recall whether
RESET sufficed, it didn't a few minutes ago, but I did other horrid
things, then) before locating the card.

Happy hunting, I'm going away for the weekend now.

++L