DOCUMENT ID: 1104-02
SYNOPSIS: Configuring Network Adapters
OS RELEASE: 2.1
PRODUCT: Solaris x86
KEYWORDS: configuring network adapters SMC 3COM token ring
DESCRIPTION:
Configuring the SMC, 3COM and Token Ring cards for Solaris x86 2.1
SOLUTION:
Network adapters should be installed according to the documentation
provided by the board vendor. In most cases, the network adapter is
simply installed by following the vendor's instructions and Solaris will
be able to access it. In some cases, special attention is required.
Note - There are Known Hardware Setup Conflicts. AST systems that have
DPT boards with the AST BIOS installed are known to conflict with SMC
cards set to I/O Port 0x300. For these system configurations, set the
SMC card to a valid setup that does not use I/O Port 0x300.
In most 486 Systems, Solaris can support more than one Ethernet card
within one platform. The limit is based on what the power supply can
handle. Mixed Ethernet and Token Ring has also been tested
successfully.
SMC Network Adapters
Newer SMC network adapters have a jumper labeled "SOFT" and should be
configured using the software setup program provided by SMC. The shared
memory address must be between 0xC0000 and OXDE000.
Older SMC boards (without a jumper labeled "SOFT" are only supported in
on of the following three configurations:
------------------------------------------------------------------
IRQ I/O Address Base Memory Address
(Board RAM)
------------------------------------------------------------------
3 0x280 0xD0000
5 0x2A0 0xD4000
5 0x300 0xD4000
------------------------------------------------------------------
Refer to the SMC documentation for details on setting the jumpers for
one of these configurations.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Note - The 8003 board has limited amount of on-board memory which causes
very poor NFS performance. To avoid this problem, it is recommended
that the NFS mounts over the 8003 interface use a 4K read/write buffer
size. See the mount_nfs(1M) manual page for more details on configuring
NFS. This problem can also impact installation of Solaris over the
network, causing occasional NFS complaints which you can ignore.
------------------------------------------------------------------
3COM EtherLink II and EtherLink II/16 Network Adapters (3C503)
These boards require an I/O address and a shared memory address to be
set using jumpers on the board. This process is described in the
documentation provided by 3COM. When choosing these addresses, you must
be sure there are no conflicts with other boards installed in the
system. Another possible source of conflict is the Interrupt Requires
Level (IRQ). The following table shows which IRQ will be used by the
3C503 board depending on the I/0 address selected by the jumpers.
----------------------------------
I/O Address IRQ Level
----------------------------------
0x250-0x2e0 3
0x300-0x350 2
----------------------------------
For example, if you configure your 3C503 at I/O address 0x250, you
should not have another device in your system which use IRQ 3. Refer to
the documentation with each individual device for information on which
IRQ is used.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Note - The 3C503 board has limited amount of on-board memory which
causes very poor NFS performance. To avoid this problem, it is
recommended that the NFS mounts over the 3C503 interface use a 4K
read/write buffer size. See the mount_nfs(1M) manual page for more
details on configuring NFS. This problem can also impact installation
of Solaris over the network, causing occasional NFS complaints which you
can ignore.
------------------------------------------------------------------
3COM EtherLink III Network Adapters (3C509)
It is recommended that the 3C509 (ISA bus) adapter be configured for
EISA addressing when installed in an EISA bus system. This
configuration is done by the setup software provided by 3COM.
IBM 16/4 Token Ring and Compatible Network Adapters
For Micro Channel Architectures (MCA), no special attention is required.
However for ISA and EISA architectures, the shared RAM size should be
set to 16K. This process is described in the vendor's documentation.
The ROM location address must be set to one of the following values:
-------------------------------------
ROM Location Address (ISA and EISA)
-------------------------------------
0xC2000
0xC6000
0xCA000
0xCE000
0xD2000
0xD6000
0xDA000
------------------------------------
Although the shared RAM size is set to 16K, the Token Ring board will
actually use 24K. You must keep this in mind when determining address
space conflicts with other boards in the system. For example if you set
the ROM location to 0xC2000, the Token Ring board will use 24K starting
at the location, so it will use all addresses in the rang e0xC2000
through 0xC7FFF.
DATE APPROVED: 10/10/95