BILLY@VENERA.ISI.EDU (Billy Brackenridge) (06/17/88)
Count me in on those interested in WD8003 driver code or any documentation on the hardware specs of the board. USC/ISI just purchased a WD8003 board along with FTP Software's TCP/IP package. The board can't transmit or recieve packets. I called FTP and we quickly determined that either theboard was dead or I have jumpers wrong. Granted that between twenty years of CRTs and occasional wire wrapping my eyes are pretty shot, but I think I have the jumpers right. I thought it was just an oversite that our board came without a diagnostic disk. I was told that "there are no WD8003 diagnostics". I never thought I'd say anything nice about 3Comm's 3c501, but it does come with diagnostics and we have shelves full of 3c501s that are broken. It is nice to know when a board is dead and to be able to determine from software the state of jumpers. We had hoped to replace our 3c501s with WD8003s as the 3c501s die, but can't. It is very difficult to manage a network without hardware diagnostics. If I had some sources or even specifications (and a known working board), I could roll my own diagnostics. -------
hlison@bbn.com (Herb Lison) (06/19/88)
In article <582485980.0.BILLY@VENERA.ISI.EDU> BILLY@VENERA.ISI.EDU (Billy Brackenridge) writes: >Count me in on those interested in WD8003 driver code or any documentation >on the hardware specs of the board. > >I thought it was just an oversite that our board came without a diagnostic >disk. I was told that "there are no WD8003 diagnostics". > >If I had some sources or even specifications (and a known working board), I >could roll my own diagnostics. >------- I requested WD diagnostics through the national hot-line and received them a few weeks ago. They seem comparable to the 3COM stuff. The only complaint I have is that the board doesn't have the Ethernet hardware address in human-readable format anywhere on it: you have to run the diagnostics to find it out. Still, the board is reliable, fast, and cheap.