On Sun, 4 Nov 2007, Limaunion wrote: > hi all! I've been using OpenBSD during the last 2-3 years mainly running > it as a firewall. > > I've an old machine (486 + 48MB RAM) and yesterday decided to make > some improvements: upgrade it from 4.0 to 4.2 (new installation) and > replace the two NICs, switching from NE2000 clones (RTL8029) to 3C905B. > The problem is that i'm getting ton of this messages which > bring down the two interfaces: > > xl0: reset didn't complete > xl1: reset didn't complete > xl0: command never completed! > xl1: command never completed! > > I found that man xl already has some information about 'command never > completed' but in this case the driver does not continue to function > normally. Is this problem a combination of old hardware with the xl > interfaces ? or are this interfaces crap too ? switching to a newer > machine (pentium 166) may help ? or should I buy another brand (which) ?
I'll go with Nick and say return to the ne2k's until they fail, or if upgrading, I'd recommend nothing less than a Pentium Pro level machine at 200 MHz. These are available on the curb for next to nothing these days, and many were "server grade" machines originally, with decent SCSI busses, decent ATA, decent PCI in general. I'm using two of them at present, both Toshiba Equium brand, twin CPU possible, using Intel Natoma chipset motherboards in tower cases with large power supplies. One is the inevitable firewall/router, (92MB RAM and never swaps) the other serves as an X-terminal (392MB RAM) with an upgraded ATI video card on its PCI. They have dual onboard 100Mhz intel ethernets, Adaptec SCSI onboard, also sound capabilites. To the 486 user, this is all luxury in abundance, two major generations more "modern". There are (i.e. I have) similar spec machines from Compaq, although these are quirky and subject to not working with OpenBSD (disk recognition problems, and Compaq used a bizarre BIOS scheme involving a hard-drive area.) Stay away from them, or use NetBSD on them. Somebody? Should I document this SCSI-disk recognition bug, or is it too ancient to be of interest? It came in at either 3.9 or 4.0. The Compaqs I have are throwaways anyway. There are some 100Mhz IBM brand (fxp) ethernet/PCI cards around (ebay), these work fine on OpenBSD after a firmware update (available from NetBSD, just boot them once on NetBSD, and they're updated and run fine on Open). Dave
