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Alternative to NIC w/Linux?
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New MessageAlternative to NIC w/Linux? (modified 0 times) Scrappy
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Okay, before I get my WebPal's back out of storage, does this sound plausable? If an ISA NIC works, would a PCMCIA-to-ISA adapter card be possible? It'll be trivial to move the interrupt line on the card to #3 (that is the correct one, right?) with a little solder,wire and a scratch on the right trace of the card (some were jumper settable!). Seems that and David Hines' PCMCIA package would open a world of possibilities. Turn that ISA slot into a universal slot...now I gotta try it.
04-30-2003 22:12:53

New MessageRE:Alternative to NIC w/Linux? (modified 0 times) bigbrd
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Its hard to say if it will work or not. The WebPal ISA interface is somewhat imcomplete. It doesn't have +12V, -5V, -12V, any of the memory interfaces (only PIO), and although you can read either 8 or 16 bit values, it doesn't return the correct indications to the
ISA board so this confuses some boards. Plus some of the high address lines aren't connected.

My plan (maybe should be called a dream) for expansion is to build an ISA bus USB card. I've got most of the parts
but its not at the top of the projects stack at this time. Plan to use an old ISA bus experimenters card I've had
for years, plus a 8 bit host mode USB chip called the SL811HS which Digikey is now selling. There is even a driver
for Linux, although from my limited research, it appears to have some glitches still.

05-04-2003 23:18:55

New MessageRE:Alternative to NIC w/Linux? (modified 0 times) Scrappy
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Wow, thanks for the info. I didn't realize it was THAT incomplete. Missing voltages, okay. Missing high address lines, well, okay I guess. PIO only...we'll see. But what do you mean when you say that it doesn't return the correct indications to the ISA board, please?
05-08-2003 20:20:04

New MessageRE:Alternative to NIC w/Linux? (modified 0 times) bigbrd
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Yes, the bits used for 8/16 selection stuff isn't completely implemented.

This means that you can read either 8 or 16 bits, but the board can't tell you
how its wants to return its data. It
is ok for 8 bit boards (like most modems), but if your board requires you to read
some of the registers as 16 bit quantities, it may not work depending on how
your ISA board. Also, some boards try and look at these pins and try
to determine if the card is plugged into an 8 or 16 bit slot. Those
algorithms have also been fooled by the WebPal implementation for some
ISA bus ethernet cards.

So, you'd have to look through your driver to see what it does
and then to try it, possibly with some printks at appropriate
places to verify what your card
is returning.

Bill

05-08-2003 23:21:10

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