WD8013EBT & XENIX ... what jumper settings are recommended ?

[z80eu]

Trying to use a WD8013EBT and XENIX 2.3.4 with TCPIP package, but I was unsure what h/w configuration would be suitable for the network card itself.
This card has really a lot of jumper, and for me not all of them have a self explanatory imprinted labeling.

There is a jumper with a label "W0B" ( see also http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/network-cards/S/STANDARD-MICROSYSTEMS-CORPORATION-Ethernet-WD8013E.html ), it seems to be the databus 8/16 selection.
What databus setting should I use for XENIX ? The card itself has a 16 bit ISA bus and is plugged also in a 16 bit ISA bus. So it's 16 bit for sure (but XENIX doc does only mention a WD8003 with 8 bit bus) ?

I/O base was set to 380h, IRQ to 10. You can enter these two settings also during the TCPIP package setup process.
And I didn't insert a boot ROM, so no other settings should be important I guess.

Any suggestions about configuring this card (with XENIX) are welcome ;-)

 

[Uniballer]

I don't have that exact card, but I do have some SMC 8013WC's made in 1993, and a WD8003WC made in 1991.

This card family has an I/O base address, IRQ, and shared memory address that must be configured, and an optional boot ROM. For example, I/O address 0x280, IRQ 10, shared memory at 0xd8000, and no boot ROM,might be appropriate for various UNIX systems as long as those choices don't conflict with anything else in the system. Many of the later cards in the family, including the ones I have, include a configuration EEPROM to allow soft configuration by a DOS program, but the picture of the WD8013EBT I found online does not have a "SOFT" setting, so it probably needs to be configured completely by jumpers.

Try to read the docs for your software and see what it expects, and also check the other hardware in your machine to ensure no conflicts. I hope this helps.

 

[Uniballer]

Hmmm, it is now unclear to me if the WD8013EBT has internal RAM for packet buffers because I don't see it in the jumper list. Maybe the RAM and ROM are always contiguous, i.e. set ROM base and disable ROM for RAM base. Anyway, here is more complete configuration info.

EDIT: further reading says that the 8013EBT definitely has shared RAM (up to 64 KiB). Perhaps software configures where it goes at run time...

 

[z80eu]

Hmmm, it is now unclear to me if the WD8013EBT has internal RAM for packet buffers because I don't see it in the jumper list. Maybe the RAM and ROM are always contiguous, i.e. set ROM base and disable ROM for RAM base. Anyway, here is more complete configuration info.

EDIT: further reading says that the 8013EBT definitely has shared RAM (up to 64 KiB). Perhaps software configures where it goes at run time...

You're right. There is "EZSETUP" (for DOS) which is made for configuring the RAM start address.
Unfortunately both of the versions of EZSETUP (1.02 and 1.22) shows me a message "no adapter found" with my plugged WD8013EBT.
I've read there can be an address range already taken by another card (and that can be a reason for it, but there is no further card inserted, which uses a larger address range (for ROM or RAM).

So I tried another card I own, a WD8003E - with this card, I was able to start the DIAGNOSE software, but it shows me a "RAM error".

I am now totally confused, does this mean both cards are defect ?
Or is my 486 PC "incompatible" ? But then why ? There is a Multi-I/O card inserted, and a Trident 8900 VGA. Nothing else.
And I am not able to find another reliable source for the DIAGNOSE and EZSETUP software for the above mentioned 80xx cards.

 

[Uniballer]

Unfortunately both of the versions of EZSETUP (1.02 and 1.22) shows me a message "no adapter found" with my plugged WD8013EBT.

The WD8013EBT is pre-PNP, so I think it has to be set to I/O address 0x280 for EZSETUP to find it.

So I tried another card I own, a WD8003E - with this card, I was able to start the DIAGNOSE software, but it shows me a "RAM error".

I would try reseating the card, and make sure that EZSETUP says the RAM is in a reasonable place before I believed it.

 

[z80eu]

The WD8013EBT is pre-PNP, so I think it has to be set to I/O address 0x280 for EZSETUP to find it.



I would try reseating the card, and make sure that EZSETUP says the RAM is in a reasonable place before I believed it.

Because I couldn't get positive results, I already set both cards to I/O address 0x280. It doesn't change anything.
And I plugged / reseated the cards more than twice (also because of changing the jumpers - I can't change them if the card is plugged in, not enough space for my hand and I can't see it properly).
I read some comments about the bad compatibility of the WD cards with VGA cards, but no details.

 

[Uniballer]

Did you try a different slot (who knows)?

Possibly useful SCO link.

Not sure how applicable this is to your case, but here is the most lucid and detailed explanation of a WD8013 conflict (relates to BSD, but who cares: the hardware is the same).

3.1.5	After installing the patchkit and recompiling the kernel with the
	option "WD8013", I am no longer able to reboot the machine.  A
	cold boot (power on) runs fine, but after a reboot no boot drive
	is found by the BIOS.  Besides having a 16-bit WD/SMC Ethernet
	card installed the machines try to boot using either a Adaptec
	1742 or 1542 SCSI board to boot from.

	This answer was provided by Hellmuth Michaelis (hm@hcshh.hcs.de)
	and by Rodney Grimes (rgrimes@acacia).

	Remove "option WD8013" from the config files and recompile and
	reinstall the kernel. 

	The reason that option WD8013 often causes this reboot problem is 
	this:
	
	There is a requirement that all memory within a 128k bank in the
	0xA0000 to 0xFFFFF region be either 16-bit or 8-bit.  On a cold 
	boot, the WD8013 boards are reset to 8-bit mode, the POST
	(Power On Self Test) passes without error.  NetBSD comes up, the 
	if_we.c driver places the WD8013 in 16-bit mode.  Now on a soft boot
	when the BIOS runs some quick POST tests it finds a problem in the 
	0xA000 to 0xF000 region.  You probably get a "beep-beep" when this
	happens.  It means you have a memory size conflict.
	The machine has been mis-configured.
	
	This is a little known fact about 16-bit vs 8-bit option cards.
	It has caused more than one person to go crazy tracking down
	what they swear is a bug in the program.  It is not, it is a
	flaw in the design of the ISA bus.  The signal MEMCS16- must be 
	returned the same for every 128k block of memory:
	
 		A0000-BFFFF	Must all be either 8-bit or 16-bit.
 		B0000-CFFFF	Must all be either 8-bit or 16-bit.
 		D0000-FFFFF	Must all be either 8-bit or 16-bit.
	
	In your particular configuration (WD8013 @ cc000) I suspect that
	you have another board in the B0000-CFFFFF region that is 8-bit, 
	i.e.  your Adaptec has an 8-bit BIOS on it!
	
	Try moving the board to the 0xD0000 region and see if it works 
	there, you may still have a problem as many modern system BIOSes
	are now 8-bit.  If your system BIOS is 8-bit, try shadowing the
	system BIOS region at 0xF0000 to 0xFFFFF, this effectively turns 
	it into a 16-bit BIOS.  

	Do not attempt to shadow the WD8013, it will cause you many
	headaches.  In fact, it sometimes helps to turn on BIOS shadowing. 
	Some BIOSes allow to copy ROM contents to unused RAM pages for 
	selected 16KB-regions. While it is generally a good idea to turn 
	BIOS shadowing off, I have also observed that sometimes it helps to 
	turn shadowing of true ROM regions on.

 

[z80eu]

Did you try a different slot (who knows)?

Possibly useful SCO link.

Not sure how applicable this is to your case, but here is the most lucid and detailed explanation of a WD8013 conflict (relates to BSD, but who cares: the hardware is the same).

3.1.5	After installing the patchkit and recompiling the kernel with the
	option "WD8013", I am no longer able to reboot the machine.  ...
...
...

[/QUOTE]

Forget XENIX in this case, I tried to test and configure them with DOS (which should be less complicated).
Meanwhile I read this
"Beware the Trident and Oak chipsets.  Many clone vendors bundle these with
 their systems because they're cheap, but they break the Roell server and
 some other X implementations.  Also, they appear to argue with the WD8003EP
 net card, and no re-arrangement of the jumpers seems to fix it.  Xfree86
 supports the Trident, but the developers say it's slow, and should be
 avoided. The Oak is not supported."

Source: http://www.menet.umn.edu/~bob/FAQ/faq.pc-clone

Could this be the reason - VGA cards with Trident Chipset are not compatible with WD80x3 cards ?

 

[Uniballer]

Could this be the reason - VGA cards with Trident Chipset are not compatible with WD80x3 cards ?

It's very possible. It's also possible that it is more nuanced (e.g. only with certain motherboard chipsets, etc.). Might be tough to figure out unless you have a ton of hardware to try with it.

 

[z80eu]

It's very possible. It's also possible that it is more nuanced (e.g. only with certain motherboard chipsets, etc.). Might be tough to figure out unless you have a ton of hardware to try with it.

I started to think about throwing these WD80x3 cards out of the (opened) window. Why ?
I can't get the cards working even in an IBM PC/XT. I had a second WD8003E, and I thought because there is no UMB present in a XT, I will not have any hassle with the RAM option of the WD cards.
After setting the card at default values (I/O 280, IRQ 3, NO ROM) and after disabling COM2 of my Multi I/O card, I was able to start DIAGNOSE with a positive result.
I never got EZSETUP running, and I tried three versions (1.02, 1.06, 1.22) of the setup program. Version 1.02 and 1.22 says, I have no board plugged in. Version 1.06 hangs and I had to reboot the PC itself.
May be there is an other setup program working (at the time before SMC buyed WD's network division, there was a software published which is NOT named EZSETUP), but I don't have it.

And because I own also a 3COM 3C503, I will continue to install the TCPIP package of XENIX with it. Hopefully THIS will work.

 

[z80eu]

Continuing with a 3C503.... but still no idea how to go on

Continuing with a 3C503.... but still no idea how to go on

Meanwhile I plugged in a 3COM 3C503, and tried to install the (XENIX) TCPIP 1.20 package.
I added first STREAMS (because of a "missing STREAMS" error message), which generates no errors.
After it, I installed TCP/IP (3 disks) including TCP/IP maintenance (1 disk), this happened also without any warning.
The installation ends always with rebuilding the kernel (which worked).

Then I realized I need also a SCO LLI driver disk (for the 3Com card), but I didn't have one.
I "googled" for it and I found only this one: ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/EFS/efs120.Z (and also ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/EFS/efs125.Z, a newer version)
But while trying to install the above mentioned LLI disk, I got a warning:
LLI should not be installed in any releases prior to 3.2.1.

I guess the version 3.0 of the LLI driver disk is too new for XENIX 2.3.4 and TCP/IP 1.20.
Still continuing with it generates a lot of additional warnings:

Warning: Streams were not successfully added to the kernel
Continuing with installation of LLI drivers but they will not work until the streams driver modules are installed

Where can I find a proper/working SCO LLI driver disk suitable for 3C503 cards and also compatible with XENIX 2.3.4 ??
Also, I didn't found any "netconfig" on harddisk. Exists that "netconfig" on the proper SCO LLI driver disk only ?

ADDED LATER:
Meanwhile I realized LLI driver disks are not needed for XENIX 2.3.4 ... so I looked for any hint using ifconfig and I found something written about using "mkdev 3comB" to use my 3C503 card.
This script and the rebuild of the Kernel worked surprisingly without any error message. I rebooted and logged in again.
But "ifconfig 3comB0" (3comB0 was found in /dev) resulted still in a "Invalid argument" message.
And "ping 127.0.0.1" results still in "ping: socket: Protocol not supported" .... needed still help.
These documents aka pdf's at http://www.tenox.net/docs/ were NOT helpful.

But I finally made it ! The key was using "mkdev" !
For the whole story, visit http://www.z80.eu/blog/index.php?entry=entry140712-185307