7 Apr
2006
7 Apr
'06
4:25 p.m.
Jay West wrote:
If you went the token ring route, you need a token
ring card for your
PC. Watch out for this, Linux and Freebsd support for token ring is
really really spotty. Only a handful of cards supported and lots of
pitfalls with each one. For freebsd, use olicom. It mostly works out of
the box. For Linux, use Madge. There are many olicoms freebsd doesn't
support, and many madge's that don't work on linux. Just certain models
of each. I think you can create a "crossover" cable to connect the two
token ring db9 ports, saving you a hub. However, I wasn't sure of that,
wanted the retro type-1 ports, so I went with a 8228 MAU and type-1
cables. You could also go with the RJ45 style token ring cables and hubs
(or crossover).
A short word here - IBM-branded PCI token ring adapters work
out-of-the-box in Linux, with the olympic driver. The IBM 4/16 PCMCIA
card also works with no major hassle, except (ironically) on ThinkPads.
Then you have to make an address exclusion in the PCMCIA config files.
Olicom's PCMCIA adapters didn't work at all in Linux through v2.2 and
v2.4. Some ISA adapters work in some systems, but configuration is a
nightmare.
I do a lot of Linux training for IBM, and it's amazing how many of
their US campuses waited till 2003-2004 to move to ethernet.
Doc