On Mon, 2002-02-04 at 20:13, Trent Shipley wrote:
> 
> Ryan is *very* dissatisfied with Nigel's work.
> 
> Ryan is satisfied with Lucas's work.
> 
> This seems pretty appropriate fodder for a list.
> 
----
I have been out of town working thru details because of my father's
death but I want to comment here - with deference to Carl who suggested
that it was not beneficial to the original poster and to Gontran and Tom
that feel that the topic is inappropriate.

The original poster was Lisa, asking how to resolve a problem with her
network card..."I think something is happening to the driver (I think it
is using tulip) but since I have (perhaps stupidly?) compiled the driver
into the kernel, I can't just rmmod/insmod to fix it,"

I suggested..."Try switching to a modular alternative like DE4X5 or
RTL8139 or NE2KPCI if they aren't compiled in."

To which Nigel stated..."I hate to point out the obvious but the DEC
chipset wont run with any of the above drivers even if they are modules"

At which point, I stated my indignence to his attempt to pedantically
frame my suggestion as something that obviously wouldn't work.

And to further amplify, Nigel subsequently wrote..."2.5 Ive used linksys
cards and many others that have the DEC chipset and they only use the
tulip.o module .."

Quite clearly the DE4x5 driver will work with a great many DEC chipsets
/ tulip chipsets AND Linksys cards - see the following from my module
source (/usr/src/linux-2.4/drivers/net/de4x5.c)

 * * * * * * * *
    Originally,   this  driver  was    written  for the  Digital  
Equipment
    Corporation series of EtherWORKS ethernet cards:

        DE425 TP/COAX EISA
        DE434 TP PCI
        DE435 TP/COAX/AUI PCI
        DE450 TP/COAX/AUI PCI
        DE500 10/100 PCI Fasternet

    but it  will  now attempt  to  support all  cards which   conform to
the
    Digital Semiconductor   SROM   Specification.    The  driver  
currently
    recognises the following chips:

        DC21040  (no SROM)
        DC21041[A]
        DC21140[A]
        DC21142
        DC21143

    So far the driver is known to work with the following cards:

        KINGSTON
        Linksys
        ZNYX342
        SMC8432
        SMC9332 (w/new SROM)
        ZNYX31[45]
        ZNYX346 10/100 4 port (can act as a 10/100 bridge!)
 * * * * * * * *

So what is obvious is that he, Nigel is ignorant of which cards/chipsets
were supported by the de4x5 driver and we all had to be ignorant
whethere Lisa's NIC was NE2000 compatible since she didn't identify the
card and thus her NIC might have worked with the other drivers that I
had suggested.

IIRC, Alan Dayley had a similar problem with the tulip driver which
cleared up when he changed to the DE4x5 driver, which tracks with some
other experiences that I have had.

I really don't mind being wrong, I wouldn't necessarily rejoice in being
right as there are much more important things to worry about. What I
mind is someone suggests that I am so dumb that I can't see the obvious
and I am especially eager to smack that person down when I am actually
correct.

So in the end, while it may have been personal but I am quite certain
that I didn't fire the first salvo. So to clarify for Nigel's
benefit...you were wrong about Linksys only working with the tulip
driver, you were wrong about the DEC chipsets only working with the
tulip driver, it's not the first time you have made statements in error
on this list - deal with it.

Craig

PS - I think the accuracy of suggestions offered to this list is very
relevant.