The epic100 driver is completely broken for the SMC 9432BTX card (BTX is the combo card- both BNC and TP). I did attach it to a 100mbit LAN. The installer did find, but it doesn't work ... I know there are some module options to make it work. Hard to say who is to blame - the module or the installer. Yes, the installer could add some more options to modules.conf. However, attaching the card to a twisted pair network is the most simple test. I didn't even dare to use the BNC interface (I know it is broken anyways ...). I don't even dare to dream of correct autosensing, this simply didn't ever work for this card ... pitty ... after all, forget Linux with this card as of now ...
You can specify module options using expert mode, if that'd be of any help..
No it doesn't ... :( The card simply does not work, period. Tried all types of network (100 FD, 100 HD, 10baseT, 10base2) and did configure the module options correctly. No chance.
I don't understand. You say first that it works if you give it options, then when pp pointed out the options, you say that it doesn't work with the options. Has it ever worked? If so, what options do you expect to make it work? I'm deferring this because we won't have time to fix and test it even if we figure out what the bug is soon.
Just FYI: did some extensive testing today. Only BNC works now (parameter options=1), UTP is completely broken. Our test cases seem to indicate that the driver doesn't really use fixed settings, even when the EEPROM of the card is properly configured (using ezstart from SMC). The options seem to have some affect, but they aren't relyble either. The card and the switch (we tried Cisco and Xylan - now Alcatel - switches) don't seem to be able to finish negotiation, and the link goes up and down. On the SMC europe homepage I did find a proper driver (note that it is different from that on the smc.com homepage). It works fine, does find the proper interface (BNC, all UTP variants) with autodection (that is, switching to BNC if no UTP link beat is detected, otherwise doing autonegotiation). It's available as source code (didn't compile on 7.0 RC2 but on 6.2), but I fear it's a commercial license ... but I think if there would be a chance to make this driver GPL (as it can be distributed anyway), somebody would just have to talk to them .... And, again: this holds only true for SMC9432BTx ("combo" card), the 9432BT (UTP only) works perfect.
Update for Florence Beta 1: - SMC9432BTX doesn't work at all without specifying any parameters (no matter whether you use BNC or TP) - BNC works if the parameter options=1 is set - twisted pair never works (tried all combinations of HD, FD 100/10 MBbit) Again, SMC9432BT (the TP-only card) works fine. The testing is quite difficult, you don't always know which part fails, but I tried two different switches and one hub, so I this is a Linux problem - also, this works fine using any version of Windows. Using hardware tests it seems as if the link is going up and down all the time - negotiation seems broken (could be something very different though)
This defect is considered MUST-FIX for Florence Gold release
After review, this defect is being re-classified; it is no longer considered MUST-FIX for the Florence release. The decision is that the TP-only cards are much more popular and hence, we are not going to worry about this one.
Thanks for the bug report. However, Red Hat no longer maintains this version of the product. Please upgrade to the latest version and open a new bug if the problem persists. The Fedora Legacy project (http://fedoralegacy.org/) maintains some older releases, and if you believe this bug is interesting to them, please report the problem in the bug tracker at: http://bugzilla.fedora.us/