[Suns-at-Home] Quad Fast Ethernet on an IPX?

[Jima]

On Sat, 30 Dec 2006, Darrick Burch wrote:
> I bought a Quad Fast Ethernet adapter (SBUS, of course) with the intent of
> using it in a SPARCStation IPX that was given to me several years ago.  It
> appears that OpenBoot discovers the adapter, as does the Linux kernel I'm
> using (the stock 2.2.20 kernel that came with Debian).
>
...
>
> Reading Sun's own manuals on this card, I noticed that this card is NOT
> supported on the IPX.  Perhaps this is why I'm having trouble?  Is there a
> reason why this card doesn't work on this machine?  I was merely
> curious...

  This is reaching back a couple of years (since I actually attempted 
this), but as I recall, when I attempted to put a QFE in an SS4 (an also 
officially-unsupported platform for the card, but quite newer than the 
IPX), I ran into some...shall we say, system unhappiness.  I forget if the 
unhappiness was more PROM-ish or (Linux) kernel-related, but the two did 
not get along.  ISTR a QE working much better, though.
  The same QFE worked quite well in an Ultra 1 and Ultra 2, however (to 
rule out bad hardware).

      Jima