Hitchhiker's Guide to Openbsd

12.4 - ARM-based appliances
[nothing yet] 
12.5 - HP300
[nothing yet] 
12.6 - HPPA
[nothing yet] 
12.7 - i386
12.7.1 - ISA NICs
As OpenBSD runs well on older hardware, users often will end up using ISA NICs on OpenBSD 
systems. ISA hardware requires much more configuration and understanding than does PCI hardware. In 
general, you can't just stuff the card in the computer and expect it to magically work. In many machines, 
if your ISA device is not in a "Plug 'n' Play" (PNP) mode, you must reserve the resources the card uses 
in the system's BIOS. 
3Com 3C509B ep(4)
This is an excellent performing ISA NIC, supported by the 
ep(4)
 driver. The 'B' version can be 
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12 - Hardware and Platform-Specific Questions
distinguished from the non-B version by labeling on the card and by the larger "main" chip on the board 
(approximately 2.5cm on a side for the 'B' version, vs. 2cm on a side on the older version), and will 
provide better performance on a loaded or dual network card system. The 3C509B ships configured in a 
PNP mode, which unfortunately does not comply with standards, and causes problems in OpenBSD's 
isapnp(4)
support. The adapter is picked up first as a non-PNP device, then again after the PNP support 
comes on-line, resulting in an extra NIC showing in the dmesg. This may work fine, or it may cause 
other problems. It is highly recommended that the 3C509B cards have PNP mode disabled and manually 
configured to non-conflicting settings using the 3Com DOS-based configuration utilities before 
configuration. 
The ep(4) driver will pick the cards up at any hardware combination that does not conflict with other 
devices in the system. 
If you have multiple 3C509 cards in your system, it is recommended that you label the cards' spine with 
the MAC address, and use the dmesg to identify which is which. 
Note that the 3C509, the 3C905 and the 3C590 are often confused. The 3C509 is a 10Mbps ISA card, 
the 3C905 and 3C590 are PCI cards. 
NE2000
The original NE2000 NIC was developed in the mid-1980s by Novell. Since then, many manufacturers 
have produced cards that are very similar, which are generally called NE2000-compatibles, or clones. 
Performance of these clone cards varies greatly. While some older NE2000-compatible cards performed 
very well, many of the currently-available ones perform poorly. NE2000-compatibles are supported by 
the 
ne(4)
driver in OpenBSD. 
OpenBSD will handle some ISAPNP-capable NE2000-compatible cards well if the ISAPNP mode is 
turned on. Other cards will have to be set using either jumpers or a DOS-based configuration utility. 
Unfortunately, as the original NE2000 cards did not have software configuration or ISAPNP support, 
there are no standards for this -- you need the utility that will have been originally supplied with your 
specific card. This can often be difficult to obtain. 
The ne(4) driver supports three configurations of the ISA NE2000 card in the GENERIC OpenBSD 
kernel: 
ne0: port 0x240 irq 9
ne1: port 0x300 irq 10
ne2: port 0x280 irq 9
If these settings are not acceptable, you can adjust them using 
User Kernel Configuration (UKC)
or by 
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12 - Hardware and Platform-Specific Questions
building a customized kernel
. 
Note that the ne(4) driver is fairly "dumb" -- only the I/O port is probed, if any of the above I/O 
addresses is detected, the corresponding IRQ is assumed. 
dmesg(8)
 will not reflect the actual IRQ of the 
adapter in the case of ISA ne(4) drivers. If this is not the actual IRQ your card is set to, it will not work. 
Note that there are non-ISA cards that use the ne(4) driver -- PCI and PCMCIA ne(4) cards exist. These 
notes do not apply to them, these devices are auto-configuring.