So I've been trying to get a dedicated Openstep machine running for a while, and just today got all the parts I needed. Here are the specs:
Compaq Deskpro EP
Pentium III 667mhz
256MB RAM
2GB primary / 4GB secondary HDD
ATI 3D Rage II video card
ES1371 sound card
Cogent EM110-TX ethernet card
Everything is working except networking, which is driving me insane. The card has a DECchip 21140 on it, and the card itself is listed on the compatibility list for Openstep, but it just won't see the thing. I tried all the default drivers and despite Configure.app recognizing the card and suggesting drivers, it would say that no device was found in the boot messages. Network configuration programs also say there is no network interface at all.
So, having run through all the drivers it suggested to me, I decided to try the updated DEC21X4X driver that wasn't on the CD, but available online. This one gets a little closer... I think it sees the card but the verbose boot message says:
DEC21X4X: PCI Dev: 10 Func: 0 Bus: 1
DEC21X4X: Unable to reserve port range 0x0-0x7f - Aborting
IOProbeDriver: No Such Device, device DEC21X4XNetwork unit 0
I think I'm seeing some sort of resource conflict here, but I'm not very familiar with Openstep as a whole so I have no idea how to resolve this. Any thoughts?
Just a wild guess, go into the BIOS and tinker with IRQ / plug&play settings there. I could easily be wrong.
Well, I just tried that.
The BIOS is pretty barebones, but it did have a section to configure PCI devices. However, it doesn't seem to work at all. I noticed that it was assigning the USB controller, the integrated audio (that I'm not using) AND the ES1371 sound card I added all to IRQ11, and that the ethernet controller was set to "Disabled". So I tried changing this. If I disable the USB and integrated audio, save and reboot, and go back into the BIOS, it doesn't keep those settings. It is not a CMOS battery issue, as I just replaced it and the system keeps time properly. In addition, if I enable the ethernet controller and then try and save, the whole thing locks up.
I think that this board might just be a bad choice. I'll have to see if I can assemble anything else to try.
BIOS saved settings aren't saving? That's weird. I've never experienced that before.
Take a look at this document for tips on dealing with IRQ's.
http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/Hardware/i386/Minding_Your_DMAs_And_IRQs.pdfAlso, see if you can turn off APIC in the BIOS as it allows IRQ's higher than 16, which OPENSTEP can't handle. Hope you get it running soon.
Quote from: "Mr Ksoft"So I've been trying to get a dedicated Openstep machine running for a while, and just today got all the parts I needed. Here are the specs:
Compaq Deskpro EP
Pentium III 667mhz
256MB RAM
2GB primary / 4GB secondary HDD
ATI 3D Rage II video card
ES1371 sound card
Cogent EM110-TX ethernet card
Everything is working except networking, which is driving me insane. The card has a DECchip 21140 on it, and the card itself is listed on the compatibility list for Openstep, but it just won't see the thing. I tried all the default drivers and despite Configure.app recognizing the card and suggesting drivers, it would say that no device was found in the boot messages. Network configuration programs also say there is no network interface at all.
So, having run through all the drivers it suggested to me, I decided to try the updated DEC21X4X driver that wasn't on the CD, but available online. This one gets a little closer... I think it sees the card but the verbose boot message says:
DEC21X4X: PCI Dev: 10 Func: 0 Bus: 1
DEC21X4X: Unable to reserve port range 0x0-0x7f - Aborting
IOProbeDriver: No Such Device, device DEC21X4XNetwork unit 0
I think I'm seeing some sort of resource conflict here, but I'm not very familiar with Openstep as a whole so I have no idea how to resolve this. Any thoughts?
This should help any future encarnations of this error:
Half the battle is finding an Openstep/ NeXTSTEP compatible ethernet card , look at the Intel hardware compatability card and in my case I examined about 9 cards until I had a match . Other cards were very close in model number but not exact and all it may take to create a compatible card is a tweak of the orginal Openstep driver template to add those classes of cards using the NeXTSTEP or openstep drive kit as a template.
So I found a winner , when you add it via the Openstep 4.2/ NeXTSTEP 3.3 Y2k patch ISO as a bonus on that CD there are a list of the very last NeXTSTEP and Openstep compatible drivers released and beta .
You can install them with a double click of the package and it helps as cards manufactured up to 2000 are supported! The VESA VBE driver works great for configuring on board video , I just used it to configure an HP Pentium 4 Box .
I used the latest Adaptec driver to install NeXTSTEP and Openstep !
The boondoggle came in finding compatible ethernet, the onboard was a no go so I disabled it in bios.
I found the card listed in the 3ComXL driver list installed it it was auto identified in configure.app .... when I rebooted
I had a similar error message where an 3com 905b PCI Ethernet card was recognized by both the Openstep 4.02 and NeXTSTEP 3.32 drivers both reported the same error as above a port error.
I resolved it by simply moving the card to an open pci slot and hpfm (hocus pokus friggin magic) upon reboot the card is now recognized and the configuration is done , after hours of toggling irqs and ports in expert settings and manipulating the bios , simplest solution was the best may it save you hours of frustration ,I'm doing snoopy dances ! I'm doing a clean install now to make sure everything is good to go as a I have a working recipe's now for HP Pentium 4's and Dells P 4's Peace out Rob