root%bostonu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa (BostonU SysMgr) (05/16/85)
The graphics lab here has an Integrated Solutions box which is a 68010 plugged into a Q-bus running 4.2. They also own a DEQNA board and would love to tap it but need a driver. Perusal by some of the people up there (they're competent, I don't check their work) concludes that the DEUNA driver is not very useful with a DEQNA. Before we dig in and write one: Does anyone have a DEQNA driver for Unix. It can just be close, I dunno, 2.9bsd or some such, we'll finish the work. Thanks in advance. -Barry Shein, Boston University P.S. Does anyone violently disagree that the DEUNA driver is hopeless in this quest? If so I'll go look myself. P.P.S. Good time, we continue to distribute a 4.2bsd and/or Wollongong TCP/IP driver for a DR11-W attached to an NIU150 attached to the Ungermann/Bass Broadband system if you can use it (see, selfish souls who canned this on the header lose!). It gives your broadband all the functionality of the ethernet for INET stuff, period.
cak@PURDUE.ARPA (Christopher A Kent) (05/16/85)
The DEQNA is a real can of worms ... even DEC admits it sucks. We don't have a Unix driver, but I have a "skeletal" standalone driver for the pdp11 that I used to figure out how to make the damn thing work. There's one problem with it; in the protocol for dealing with who owns net buffers, there's a provision for marking a packets "used"; the manual seems to imply that you make a ring of unused buffers, hand them to the device, he fills them in, marks them used, interrupts you, and waits for more. It's not quite true; the device will happily overwrite a buffer that it has used and that you haven't cleared out yet. My driver/program does NOT handle this; I had finished it before we discovered this, and never got interested enough to fix it (especially since the "right" way to fix it isn't at all clear.) For what it's worth, the Ultrix driver ignores the overwriting problem, too. I'll happily send my program out to anyone that wants a copy; I'm putting together a note summarizing the horror stories that we've had trying to make this thing talk to the world. Cheers, chris ----------