From: chekov (chekov at domain indigo.ie)
Date: Tue 12 Oct 1999 - 18:02:04 IST
I just went through the nightmare of installing a Xircom Realport CE3
10/100
nic card on a Compaq Armada 1750 (avoid this laptop btw, it requires
serious work to get X to work on the ATI RAGE LT PRO card that comes
with it). It seems that Xircom changed the card without changing the
model number recently, breaking the linux driver (xirc2ps_cs.c) which
was (until very recently) unmaintained. So old versions of the card
work
while new ones do not. To get it to work I had to apply a patch by
hand,
from some obscure mailing list. The most recent version of the pcmcia
package has the patch in it, (although the pcmcia docs refer to the
xircom driver as unmaintained so I don't know how it got there and the
Xircom development list seems unaware of the fix). This Linux mailing
list for Xircom driver development at
http://hyper.stanford.edu/HyperNews/get/pcmcia/xircom.html
However a very small proportion of the posts are solutions. In general
the list goes like this:
MSG1: My Xircom whatever card doesnt work
> MSG2: yeah me too
> MSG3: and me
.
.
.
> MSG10 Here is why it doesnt work, Xircom have done this, there is
no solution.
From this experience I'd counsel avoiding Xircom cards absolutely,
anybody
who changes the chips on a card without telling anybody is an idiot, it
is
not surprising that these people don't support Linux.
(Incidentally the ATI RAGE PRO LT card was apparently also changed
without
changing the part number. So while all of the documentation for xfree
says
that it is supported by 3.3.5, actually it seems that only older cards
are
supported, mine unfortunately was not, although that is another story..)
Chekov Feeney.
"John P . Looney" wrote:
>
> On Tue, Oct 12, 1999 at 10:50:26AM +0100, Jakma, Paul mentioned:
> > > What about PCMCIA NICs ? Any particular makes/models which just work
> > > ?
> > xircom's work pretty well ime.
>
> Are they not a nasty company that won't tell Linux programmers how to
> program their products ?
>
> AFAIK, all the Xircom drivers are reverse engineered. Buy stuff that
> supports Linux in some way.
>
> Kate
>
> --
> Microsoft. The best reason in the world to drink beer.
> http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~valen
>
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