Subject: Re: Couple of questions
From: Timothy A. Seufert (tas@mindspring.com)
Date: Sun Nov 25 2001 - 01:25:48 MST
At 12:03 PM -0800 11/24/01, Mark Jaffe wrote:
> I will again echo problems with Ethernet on old-world Macs. I am having
> a DISMAL experience with built-in ethernet on an 8500 and YDL 2.0. I had
> absolutely NO connection using DHCP through a hub when at my home office
> while MacOS connectivity was fine. When I returned the machine to the
> Co-Lo and put it on a static IP, it connected fine for a day or so then
> disappeared off the network. I have not been able to get back to it since
> it disappeared the night before Thanksgiving and my ISP is out of the
> office.
>
> YDL is NOT ready for prime-time. I am getting furious with this system. I
> was getting ready to switch over because I need the faster machine, but I
> cannot rely on this flaky networking. MkLinux on the Power120 is still
> chugging along, I have NEVER had problems like this with it.
You are directing your frustration in the wrong direction. This is
not YDL's fault; TerraSoft didn't write the relevant driver; the
first version of it was written long before YDL existed. To the best
of my knowledge TerraSoft does not employ any of the major PPC kernel
developers, so they don't play a large role in kernel development,
though they do contribute what they can.
Maybe you could fault them for not catching the bug themselves, but
I'm pretty certain TerraSoft doesn't have the resources (either
capital or labor) to do full scale matrix testing.
When driver bugs like this happen, you need to work with the kernel
developers who maintain the PowerPC port. Write up a short but
descriptive bug report and post it on the linuxppc-dev mailing list.
Please realize that many of the PowerMac specific drivers in the true
[*] Linux kernel were developed without benefit of documentation from
the manufacturer. Furthermore, there aren't any public errata lists.
This *sounds* like a classic example of a Linux driver not being
robust in the face of an unknown hardware bug.
One way to get reliable networking now is to put in a well supported
PCI network card. In general, Tulips and many Tulip clones work well.
[*] MkLinux is quite different from the normal Linux kernel, and was
written by Apple employees with access to internal documentation.
-- Tim Seufert
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Sun Nov 25 2001 - 01:38:39 MST