[lug] Ethernet card problem

[D. Stimits]

Ronald Kumon wrote:
> 
> I just installed Windows 98 and Red Hat 7.0 on my venerable Pentium-133
> machine.  I was able to get networking going on the Windows side, but
> there seems to be a problem on the Linux side.  I have a 3Com 905C NIC.

This may have nothing to do with it, but do be sure you have in your
bios that "o/s is NOT plug-n-play aware". This would allow the bios to
do some partial setup of the hardware before linux sees it.

> When I boot, the following messages appear in /var/log/messages:
> 
> Feb 25 22:37:06 nonlinear2 kernel: 3Com 3c90x Version 1.0.0i 1999
> <linux_drivers at 3com.com>
> Feb 25 22:37:06 nonlinear2 kernel: HostError <1>Unable to handle kernel
> NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000000
> Feb 25 22:37:06 nonlinear2 kernel: current->tss.cr3 = 048bc000, %cr3 =
> 048bc000
> Feb 25 22:37:06 nonlinear2 kernel: *pde = 00000000
> Feb 25 22:37:06 nonlinear2 kernel: Oops: 0002
> Feb 25 22:37:06 nonlinear2 kernel: CPU:    0
> Feb 25 22:37:06 nonlinear2
> kernel: EIP:    0010:[3c90x:__insmod_3c90x_O/lib/modules/2.2.16-22/net/3c90x.o_M39A2E18+-4960384/84]
> Feb 25 22:37:06 nonlinear2 kernel: EFLAGS: 00010286
> Feb 25 22:37:06 nonlinear2 kernel: eax: 00000000   ebx: 00000003
> ecx: c4b71f80   edx: c489bda4
> Feb 25 22:37:06 nonlinear2 kernel: esi: bffffbb0   edi: 00000041
> ebp: c489bfbc   esp: c489bfa4
> Feb 25 22:37:06 nonlinear2 kernel: ds: 0018   es: 0018   ss: 0018
> Feb 25 22:37:06 nonlinear2 kernel: Process ifconfig (pid: 278, process
> nr: 10, stackpage=c489b000)
> Feb 25 22:37:06 nonlinear2 kernel: Stack: c489a000 bffffbb0 00000041
> 00000041 bffffb08 c3f2e500 bffffb08 c010a031
> Feb 25 22:37:06 nonlinear2 kernel:        00000004 00008914 bffffad0
> bffffbb0 00000041 bffffb08 00000000 0000002b
> Feb 25 22:37:06 nonlinear2 kernel:        0000002b 00000036 400edf24
> 00000023 00000202 bffffab8 0000002b
> Feb 25 22:37:06 nonlinear2 kernel: Call Trace: [reschedule+5/12]
> Feb 25 22:37:06 nonlinear2 kernel: Code: 00 00 00 00 e0 a5 f3 c3 84 a3 c0
> e4 84 a3 c0 e4 ff ff 00 00
> 
> Does anyone know what this means and what I can do about it?
> The NIC is plugged into a PCI slot.  To get it working under Windows, I
> had to enable that slot in the BIOS (Phoenix 4.05.21) and set the latency
> to 40 as per the 3Com README.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.
> --Ron Kumon
> 
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