tlug: Building a better beast: binutils 2.8 and 3Com 3C90x'Boomerang' (adding a new driver to the kernel config)

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

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tlug note from "Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>
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Hi all,

Ordered the wondrous handy-dandy Acme Roadrunner-catcher, aka 3Com's
3C900 EtherLink XL (for PCI).  Thought it was a "Vortex", but it's not
- it's based on the "Boomerang" chipset.  No driver in the 2.0.29
distribution, of course.

But Donald Becker (who wrote every other good driver, it seems) is
writing one, and I managed to install the current version which loads
and finds the card and everything.  I think it actually works.  (ping
does, anyway :-)  So if you should want to do such a thing, you can
find the latest drivers for those cards at (approximately)

	 ftp://CESDIS.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/linux/drivers/vortex

(Apparently the two chipsets are closely related and he's creating a
common driver or something.)

In order to build a kernel with them or even modules, you need to
change /usr/src/linux/drivers/net/Config.in and the Makefile in that
directory.  You might even be able to use "patch < $Steves_mail",
although that's not guaranteed unless you've got 2.0.29.

--- Config.in~	Tue Feb 18 20:37:55 1997
+++ Config.in	Thu May 29 11:04:30 1997
@@ -52,4 +52,7 @@
     tristate '3c509/3c579 support' CONFIG_EL3
     tristate '3c590 series (592/595/597) "Vortex" support' CONFIG_VORTEX
+    if [ "$CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL" = "y" ]; then
+      tristate '3c900 series (905) "Boomerang" support' CONFIG_BOOMERANG
+    fi
   fi
   bool 'AMD LANCE and PCnet (AT1500 and NE2100) support' CONFIG_LANCE
--- Makefile~	Tue Feb 18 20:37:53 1997
+++ Makefile	Thu May 29 10:58:23 1997
@@ -295,4 +295,12 @@
 endif
 
+ifeq ($(CONFIG_BOOMERANG),y)
+L_OBJS += 3c90x.o
+else
+  ifeq ($(CONFIG_BOOMERANG),m)
+  M_OBJS += 3c90x.o
+  endif
+endif
+
 ifeq ($(CONFIG_EEXPRESS),y)
 L_OBJS += eexpress.o

In the process of building the new kernel, I discovered that binutils
2.8 eliminated the "-k/--raw" option from the objdump utility, which
is used to build the compressed kernels.  I used my old 2.6-cygnus
objdump, which worked fine.

It is probably the case that the option has been renamed with somewhat 
different functionality, but it was completely undocumented in the
binutils distribution (maybe it got deprecated in 2.7, but I couldn't
find that in Changelog or NEWS).  So there's a warning on that one,
OK?

Regards,
Steve

-- 
                            Stephen J. Turnbull
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences                    Yaseppochi-Gumi
University of Tsukuba                      http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tel: +81 (298) 53-5091;  Fax: 55-3849              turnbull@example.com
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