PU wrote:
Hello,
I have a bit of a problem I'm hoping someone here can help with. I built a
6.2 FBSD box and wound up with a bad NIC out of 3 and what I thought might
have been a bad pci slot. I replaced the NIC with a new one, and moved the
card to another slot just to make sure I took care of the problem.
However, now when I boot up, my rl0 interface is recognized, but isn't
'initialized'. What I mean by that is that I see entries in dmesg, but an
ifconfig does not show that interface. I can't even plumb the thing as the
OS says it doesn't exist. What really throws me is that the other two NICs
and a video card that were also moved are recognized with no problems at
all. Problems just seem to follow the rl0 interface.
Hmmm .. ISTM that the way to attack this is to take a single NIC and
try it in each slot to make sure that card it properly recognized.
Repeat for each NIC. You will discover one of several possibilities:
a) A given NIC is actually bad in that it fails in one or more slots
where the other (good) NICs work in any slot you try.
Remedy: Place the NIC on the ground and strike it repeatedly
with a large hammer.
b) All NICs work in some slots but fail on others. This would hint
to one of two possibilities: A bad PCI slot or a motherboard
that does strange and perverse things by hardwiring certain
interrupts to certain slot positions (yes, I've seen this and
it's maddening). Remedy: Run over the motherboard with a large
tank.
c) Any given NIC will work in any slot, but they cannot all coexist in the
same machine. I have seen this sort of problem (not with NICs) and it
was the aforementioned PCI interrupt mapping being hardwired and/or
shared in unpleasant ways. REMEDY: Again, run over the motherboard.
P.S. RealTeks are not terrific NICs. For low end - if you can even still
find them, I like the old 3Com 3c905s. For a few bucks more, the
Intels seem to be quite nice as well.
P.P.S. Make sure the mobo BIOS isn't doing something unnatural about
interrupt mapping/sharing and PCI slot configuration.
P.P.P.S Roasting goats
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Tim Daneliuk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/
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Tim Daneliuk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/
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