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