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network card "invalid signature" (modified 0 times) stamasd Profile I have eventually managed to flash my webpal with the linux.flash.image using bigbrd's bootstrap procedure, and have Linux boot happily. I also made a root partition on a laptop drive from the Debian potato ARM base2_2.tgz package with a few extras - will expand it later. For now I want to get the network card running so I can login remotely. I have a RTL8019-based ISA card which I have set to 0x300, irq=3. Verified working in a Linux PC. In the webpal, the boot messages show "NE *000 ethercard probe at 0x80400300: not found (invalid signature 42 42)" I have seen mentions on the forum of using "0xbad" as a boot parameter for getting over this, but I don't grok the exact way it should be done (there seems to be some information missing). I have seen a mention of using "bad=0xbad" as a parameter for the module, but the kernel from bigbrd's site is monolithic, the driver is built-in. Should I add "ether=9,0x80400300,0xbad,0xbad,eth0" to the parameters partition as I have seen mentioned in another post? BTW, the NIC is a very generic one, it doesn't have any manufacturer logo or model number, just a "made in China" on one side. It uses the RTL8019AS chip. The board layout is similar to the KNE20T. 05-21-2004 13:28:35

RE:network card (modified 0 times) stamasd Profile Well I tried the string ether=9,0x80400300,0xbad,0xbad,eth0 and it didn't solve anything. When I put it on a separate line in the file that I flash into the parameters partition, the string is simply ignored by the kernel. If I put it at the end of the line the line "command=video=..." separated by a space, the kernel sees it as a parameter, however it doesn't probe for the card anymore, and of course eth0 doesn't show up as a configirable interface. There's no more mention of a network card in the boot messages at all. Help please?! 05-22-2004 06:12:15

RE:network card (modified 0 times) justdavesj Profile | Email The webpal only has +5v so make sure that your card is not expecting to use any other voltages. I had a similar problem with a 3com card and found that it needed +-12v. You can usually find out the manufacturer from the id number that should be on the card. Just google the number. dave 05-22-2004 10:16:51

RE:network card (modified 1 times) stamasd Profile Like I said, there is no identifier whatsoever on the card. No serial number, no FCC ID, nothing. Just "Made in China" on the back. I can probably trace the ISA connections to see if the card wants +12V. But I have seen this message on several embedded Linux mailing lists (esp. uCLinux). There seems to be something weird going on with some cards' way the eeprom is read, so they return the values at the wrong locations instead of the 0x57, 0x57 that the driver expects. Lemme see if I can hack around this. However, I have stumbled into something else now. I'm trying to compile a kernel with the ne driver as a loadable module and built-in IDE support, but the compilation fails at hd.c with the message "IRQ_HARDDISK undeclared". I have tried selecting various options in menuconfig for the IDe. but it always stops at the same place. I am using the 2.4.18 sources with the rmk4 and wp2 patches (from BigBrd's site), and a gcc-2.95.3 based cross compiler. Specifically the error is: make: Entering directory `/home/silviu/webpal/kernel/linux/drivers/ide' make all_targets make: Entering directory `/home/silviu/webpal/kernel/linux/drivers/ide' arm-linux-gcc -D__KERNEL__ -I/home/silviu/webpal/kernel/linux/include -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -Wno-trigraphs -O2 -fno-strict-aliasing -fno-common -fno-common -pipe -mapcs-32 -march=armv3 -mtune=arm710 -mshort-load-bytes -msoft-float -DKBUILD_BASENAME=hd -c -o hd.o hd.c hd.c: In function `hd_times_out': hd.c:503: `IRQ_HARDDISK' undeclared (first use in this function) hd.c:503: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once hd.c:503: for each function it appears in.) hd.c: In function `do_hd_request': hd.c:613: `IRQ_HARDDISK' undeclared (first use in this function) hd.c: In function `hd_geninit': hd.c:819: `IRQ_HARDDISK' undeclared (first use in this function) make: *** [hd.o] Error 1 make: Leaving directory `/home/silviu/webpal/kernel/linux/drivers/ide' make: *** [first_rule] Error 2 make: Leaving directory `/home/silviu/webpal/kernel/linux/drivers/ide' make: *** [_subdir_ide] Error 2 make: Leaving directory `/home/silviu/webpal/kernel/linux/drivers' make: *** [_dir_drivers] Error 2 05-22-2004 10:30:14

RE:network card (modified 0 times) bigbrd Profile For compiling the kernel, you should turn off the option "Use old disk-only driver on primary interface" and turn on "Include IDE/ATA-2 DISK support. I haven't ever used the older hd.c driver...I've always used the newer one. In terms of the "bad=0xbad" parameter, I had thought that a kernel built using the newer wp2 mods wouldn't need it anymore since I fixed a bunch of bugs in the ne driver. However, there are numerous clones, so it is still possible the "bad" parameter is needed for some. If you do still need it, then the only way to do things is to compile the driver was a module, load it using insmod giving the info on the insmod line. The driver in the "wp2" kernel will work with PNP boards if you include PNP and ISAPNP into the kernel. That prevents you from having to manually set to IO addresses of the board (although it should still work if you've already done this). Bill 05-22-2004 15:02:50

RE:network card (modified 0 times) stamasd Profile Bill, That is in fact precisely what I was doing - selected the newer driver, and deselected the older one. Don't know why it was still picking the old driver in the build phase (I checked the config several times). I have managed to get past this stage though. It looks like there is something wrong with my toolchain, which I built myself. It works fine on many programs, but chokes on the kernel. Eventually I downloaded the toolchain linked to from your web page, and managed to compile the kernel fine with it. Now onto getting the card recognized. It bugs me to no end that for now the only way to get something onto the drive is to pull it out and mount it in my desktop... grrrr. 05-22-2004 19:00:07

RE:network card (modified 0 times) stamasd Profile Well, it works. I have managed to compile a kernel with a modular ne driver, and when I load it with "insmod ne.o io=0x80400300 irq=9 bad=0xbad" it recognizes the card and I can configure it and do all networking fine. Ahhh, the joys of ssh. Funny thing though, I had a hard time getting the newly built kernel to boot on the webpal. Turns out that a >800k kernel won't boot with the 2.1 bootloader, it needs the 3.2 one. Another pointer: don't compile in the "Webpal RTC" option if you haven't gotten around adding the actual hardware, or else it'll hang the kernel at boot. So I guess you can add another card to the list of those working in the webpal. Don't know the make, but it's RTL8019AS based. The MAC address starts with 52:54:4c, maybe that can point to the manufacturer. Thanks for the help everyone. 05-23-2004 18:53:00

RE:network card (modified 0 times) stamasd Profile So I've finally added the RTC circuit to my Webpal (using a DS32KHZ temp-compensated oscillator instead of a mere crystal) and replaced the kernel, so now it has become a full-fledged Unix workstation. Wish I had one this powerful back in the '80s. :) Again thank you Bill and Dave! 06-03-2004 07:17:39

RE:network card (modified 0 times) newbee Profile stamasd, could you summarize what you have done from scratch ? I am not sure where to start though. :( I am downloading justdave's ftp site but having troubles. since I don't know what I need, I am downloading all and that might have caused a trouble. If justdave is having trouble with his ftp site, that might be from my traffic. Sorry. (My network is very slow.. so it shouldn't though) I ended up with giving up justdave's ftp site.. my goal is.. :) all that you guys have done. but I probably need to start soldering the posts for serial programming, right ? 07-25-2004 23:00:18

RE:network card (modified 0 times) justdavesj Profile | Email I have been upgrading the motherboard and case on my server so the ftp site has been up and down a lot over the last two weeks. All the testing has been finished now and there should be no more problems. Please contact me if there are. dave 07-26-2004 14:54:54

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