Not sure about 3Com cards (have never been able to afford 'em!), but
isapnp tools works wonders with most cards, and PCI should work without
running the DOS utilities. Additionally, here's a thought - what would
prevent the inclusion of a small 1.44 MB or such DOS partition on the hard
drive, with an AUTOEXEC.BAT file written to automatically dump the user
into the NIC config utility? Tell Lilo about it and, should the customer
ever have to reconfigure, it's not _that_ arcane (no more so than, say,
F8 at bootup and 'Safe Mode' would be).
- Chris
> > I'm using an el-cheapo D-Link DE220 ($29 ISA PnP ethernet card from
> > CompUSA) with Linux, no problem. ISAPNP configured it correctly, then it
> > was a simple matter to modprobe in the ne.o module (the card's a NE2000
> > clone) in with the i/o port and irq values specified by ISAPNP. Works
> > flawlessly. It *can* be done, with one or two more steps in the
> > configuration process.
>
> I know it can be done, and I take a similar route at home.
>
> At work I'm not the hardware guy. The hardware manager prefers to stick
> with certain name brand manufacturers becuase he prepers "quality." We
> settled on a 3Com 509 card after trying a few others. The trouble PnP gave
> us was that we had to put the card in a DOS machine, run a utility, etc.
> This slowed down the process of building the hardware. Also, if the
> customer ever had a problem, they would have to run the DOS utility, etc,
> which we felt was not going to be something they should face. What would
> have been best is an older card with jumpers, but fewer and fewer
> companies (that the hardware guy likes) are doing that.
>
> What can I say, PnP limited our choices. That was my point - MS is driving
> the hardware on which we use Linux, at least for Intel versions. Because
> of this, I think MS can mess with Linux.
>
>
> Bruce Tong
> Systems Programmer
> Electronic Vision / FITNE
>
> mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.ev.net/fitne
>
Chris. | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://ebhon.jnst.uor.edu/Users/crank
Give me life, give me pain, give me myself again
- tori amos
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