In comp.os.linux.networking Carl <moc.erawtfosdigir@treblig_tnomal> wrote:

> >>How do I change the interrupt line ? - can I just change the value in the
> >>modules.conf file ?

> well interrupts can be shared so lets first make sure the modules.conf
> has the correct interrupt.

I agree. That's what I said.

> > That only informs the driver of what IRQ the card is using. (and I
> > thought the driver could find that by interrogating the card nowadays,
> > so maybe if you HAVE an irq= thing there, that is wrong?).
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^
i.e. don't set the driver to the wrong IRQ.

> > If you want to change the irq that the card uses, you have to set it on
> > the card.
> >
> > Depending on the card, that may involve using the dos setup disk for
> > it, or if you are lucky and it is pnp (which probably is faulty on the
> > card ..), using isapnp, or if you are very very lucky, use 3c5x9setup.

> I think he just needs to make sure the driver is trying to use the
> proper irq that the card is set to. he should do this

> lspci -v

No he shouldn't. It's a 3c509B. That's an *isa* card. It predates even
PnP, and the procedure for dealing with it is generally to turn off
pnp on the card via jumpers (later cards had pnp that worked badly),
set the irq and io to one of a known good set of posibles via some dos
utility or 3x5x9setup, retire to a safe distance, reconfigure your
driver, and reload it.

PnP and isapnp were sometimes known to work with the card, but not
that often that one would want to do things that way.

> if you do not have 2 network cards installed, you should only have 1
> entry for a network card in /etc/modules.conf

> alias usb-controller usb-uhci
> alias eth0 3c509
> options 3c509 irq=5

Hmmm. So one can tell the driver which irq. I couldn't remember wther
it was the irq or the io region. You see, the 3c509 can be set to any
of several io regions, and I wouldn't like to probe at the wrong ones!

I seem to remember that 0x300 and 0x270 were "good" regions to set it
to. And that then it could be set to one of several IRQs, such as 3, 7,
9, 11.

> alias eth1 3c509

> I would eliminate altogether or just put a # in front of that options
> line, and see if that fixes it. but first if you do not have 2 cards,
> erase that alias eth1 3c509 line altogether.

> i really expect the 3c509 should work without manually telling the
> driver which irq the card is set to, what does the readme say about that?

I think it would need either the irq or the io region or both. But the
modern driver may be smarter. Looking at the source would tell us.

Peter