[9fans] Plan 9 installation

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

The problem host is a DELL Optiplex Gs+ 5120L.

The problem hardware bits are the 3Com ethernet adapter and the
Trio VGA adapter.

The S3 Trio 64V+ (N1C3CF - if that means anything, the 86C765 may
well) doesn't have a matching entry in vgadb, bit I found something
else that resembled it.  The results were disappointing, the screen
mapping seemed totally wrong, to the extent that I cannot really
describe it.  What I do remember, though, is the band of random-looking
bits across the middle of the screen.  I only tried 800x600x8 with
any success.

Even more intriguing is the Ethernet card.  The chip is marked
Lucent, the Parallel Tasking version, and on it I found 9640S and,
in case it again means anything, 40-01304.

The only noticeable effect of having ether0=elnk3 in plan9.ini has
been to freeze the display at the point where 9load would scan the
ethernet adapter (that's what it looked like to me).  Strangely,
but maybe not so strangely, I have seven 3C509B-TPOs here and in
trying to determine why the NetBSD netboot complained about not
being able to reset the eeprom, I found that plan9 (or more likely
9load) behaved similarly on one of these adapters as it did on the
Dell.

It sounds to me like there is a bete noir amongst the 3Com adapters
and any suggestions on resolving this problem (from sources closer
to the designers, I imagine) will be very welcome.  The 3C509B-TPOs
have a Lucent chip very similar to the Dell's, except that there
is no device-like number:

	3COM
    40-0411-001
 9804KGA25

more or less in the above fashion is all I can see besides the
Parallel Tasking logo (I see no "LUCENT" in this here case, amazing
how one makes invalid assumptions).

++L