3c574 NIC support with recent 2.6 kernels.

[cga2000]

On Mon, Feb 05, 2007 at 02:09:40AM EST, Peter Stuge wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 04, 2007 at 11:06:58PM -0500, cga2000 wrote:
> > > > > >   product info: "3Com", "Megahertz 3CCFEM556", "LAN + 56k Modem", ""
> > > > > 
> > > > > This looks like a 32-bit CardBus card, not a 16-bit PCMCIA card.
> 
> The 3CCFEM556 is a 16-bit PCMCIA card, not a CardBus card.
> 
> 
> > > Possibly there's a PCI ID missing from the 3c59x driver.  What
> > > does lspci tell you about the card?  Do you have yenta_socket
> > > loaded so you can see the card in the slot?
> > 
> > Update:
> > 
> > rebooted the debian "etch" installer and tried the 3c59x driver but
> > am still getting the same result..
> 
> You're definately looking for the 3c574_cs driver in 2.6 kernels.
> 
> pcmcia-cs-3.2.8 comes with a .cis and a .dat file for this card, have
> you made the information within available to the 2.6 pcmcia drivers?
> See http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/howto.html under
> "2.5. The difficult cases: CIS overrides"
> (Basically copy 3CCFEM556.dat to /lib/firmware/3CCFEM556.cis)
> 
> 
> > are you suggesting that I might need a patched version so my modem/nic
> > combo is recognized?
> 
> I think it should just work.

It did.  :-)

With your excellent help, I should have been able to get this to work in
about an hour but ran into a problem with the KME/SCSI card in the other
slot that caused booting into my new install to fail.

>From the messages before the crash, I eventually figured out that the
problem was likely with this other card, so I physically removed it and
was able to do a clean install.

Since I wasn't sure where to look for the correct version of
3CCFEM556.dat, I told the installer that I didn't have a network card,
rebooted into the new system .. found a 3CCFEM556.dat file in the /etc
tree .. pcmcia Version 3.2.8, IIRC, copied/renamed it to /lib/firmware
as 3CCFEM556.cis .. rebooted .. and sure enough "ifconfig -a" and other
tell-tale signs such as boot-up messages and the light on the NIC's
dongle coming on .. showed that the card had been recognized. 

After that it was just a matter of running dhclient to bring up eth0.

I needed to add the magical "auto eth0" and "iface eth0 inet dhcp" to
/etc/network/interfaces to ensure that all this is done automatically
when I reboot .. and that was it.

It just worked.

I could kick myself for wasting so much time over what turns out to be a
trivial problem.  Once you know the solution of course.

:-)

Can't thank you enough for your help.

Thanks,

cga