Subject: Ethernet cards and isacfg
To: None <port-alpha@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Ken Hornstein <kenh@cmf.nrl.navy.mil>
List: port-alpha
Date: 04/23/1997 10:26:25
I've been playing around with the ed driver, trying to get it working
on the Alpha.  I'm sort-of the way there, but I ran into an interesting
problem along the way (BTW, this is on a AXPpci 33 with the latest
console firmware).

When the ed driver attempted to register an IRQ, the following message
was printed:

alpha_shared_intr_establish: isa irq 9: warning: using edge-triggered on
level-triggered

and the machine would hang right before it was supposed to print the
"root on ffs" message.

After looking at things some more, I found out that the sio driver (the
PCI-ISA bridge) has a define called BROKEN_PROM_CONSOLE, and if this is
defined (by default it is) it tries to preserve the initial state of
the bridge chip.  I figured this was the reason that isa irq 9 was set
to be level-triggered by default, so I turned this define off, and the
machine was able to successfully probe the card and boot.

Now it's my understanding that ISA cards should be entered into the
SRM console firmware with the "isacfg" command.  However, when I try to
add a new device with isacfg, it says, "ISA table is full".

What is the right thing to be doing here?  Should isacfg work?  Or
should I leave BROKEN_PROM_CONSOLE undefined?

--Ken