Ken Hornstein <kenh@cmf.nrl.navy.mil> writes:

> - My friend had also bought a 3com 3C589D PCMCIA ethernet card.  We
>   tried using that, and it probed and ifconfig'd up successfully, but
>   it turns out it would only send packets, never receive any (however,
>   now that I think about it, it may have been an IRQ problem, since the
>   PCMCIA code assigned IRQ 9 to it, and I bet that was used by something
>   else).  I'm assuming the 3C589D is really close to the 3C589, because
>   it did power up the card and send packets successfully.
This card works fine as does the 3c562D.  Its a thorny problem as to
what irq's to let the pcmcia use.  I have a 560X and the pcmcia
package likes to give the ether irq5 -- which is the sound system for
me.  So I have to move the irq higher.  I like to set
options         PCIC_ISA_INTR_ALLOC_MASK=0x8600
in my config file. This says to use irq 9,10,15 for pcmcia devices.
Its odd that irq9 is bad, because it usually is a safe irq for 
devices.  You might try removing irq 9 and adding irq 11 above.
(PS you can also patch the associated variable in the kernel debugger
when you start up.)


PS 
I trust this is the sony 3 lb machine.  I don't now what the sony
pricing is but I really like my 560X which is 4lbs and has a bigger
screen and keyboard than the new 3lb sony.