Olicom RapidFire 3140 Token-Ring 16/4 PCI Adapter

Olicom, Inc. commissioned The Tolly Group to verify operational interoperability of the RapidFire 3140's Wake-on-LAN feature with the following Wake-on-LAN (WOL) capable PCs: Compaq Deslpro EN, Dell Optiplex GNPlus, and the IBM Workstation 3000. The Tolly Group installed the RapidFire adapter in each of the PCs, turned off each PC's power, and verified that the adapter responded to a "magic packet" and properly activated each PC's power. A magic packet contains special data specifically for WOL technology. The WOL adapter remains active (via a special connection to the motherboard) even though the PC's power is not, ignores all other network traffic when the PC's power is not active, and then activates the PC when it receives the magic packet.

This little fiasco was my first encounter with a Token Ring card. I hope that I never encounter one again. Main reason for this write-up is in case I do.

Fresh install of SuSE Linux 7.1 from the CD's.

              My initial attempts with this were, as I found out, with the wrong
            card and the wrong software. I was under the impression that the latest
            version of SuSE contained a driver for the Olicom boards. I found that
            it had a driver for Madge and thru investigation on the Web it appeared
            that Madge and Olicom had joined. (They did.) Through other words of
            misinterpretation, I thought the Madge driver would work on the Olicom.
            I at first had an older card, a 3133 ISA card, and it was not supported.
            The Madge driver was expecting a PCI card. I finally obtained a 3140
            card and tried it.  It did not work either!
            
              The Olicom drivers are obtained from http://www.madge.com
            
              Obtained drivers for Olicom 3140. Found that I have to patch the Kernel.
            The drivers I got only had as high up as Kernel 2.2.13. I have 2.2.18. 
            So, I need to make some changes. First unzip the oltr2213.gz package.
                 gzip -d oltr2213
            Now this is a special patch file so don't get carried away with
            your mods. All we really want to do is change the 2.2.13 to 2.2.18.
            There are 14 occurances of the version number. It also has an orig
            tacked on to it. We are going to copy ours to a 2.2.18.orig version.
            Unless you are cramped for room, then just use the one that is on
            the HD. If you haven't made any changes to it already, you can get
            the source back from the CD. If you have made changes then be sure
            to at least save those.
               Contents of /usr/src directory:
                    linux-2.2.18
                    openssl-0.9.6
                    linux -> linux-2.2.18.SuSE
                    packages
            
              This was a fresh install right off the CD's. Since linux just points
            to linux-2.2.18.SuSE I re-named linux-2.2.18 to linux-2.2.18.orig.
            
              Now after changing the version inside the oltr22xx file, save it
            and exit the editor. Now we need to put it back in gzip form. First
            change the name to oltr2218. then:
                   gzip oltr2218
            Ok now we have a new file with which to patch the kernel with.
            But I must head for home and see the family.
            
              I'm back. First move into the /usr/src/linux dir...as root! The 
            following commands will depend on where you placed the files. I placed 
            them in my home dir under a subdir called Olicom. Therefore, the commands 
            that I will execute are:
                gzip -d -c /home/ctaylor/Olicom/oltr-137.gz | patch -s -p1
                gzip -d -c /home/ctaylor/Olicom/oltr2218.gz | patch -s -p1
            
            
              Now put linux-2.2.18.orig back to linux-2.2.18. You have to do a
            make config.  The better one is make xconfig but you have to be in
            X-windows and have set xhost + localhost for the display unless you
            cheated and logged in a root.
            
              Went thru the configuration and the Olicom card was not one of the
            choices. I edited the /usr/src/linux/.config file and added CONFIG_OLTR=y.
            Also change /usr/src/linux/drivers/net/Config.in to add -
              tristate 'Olicom chipset PCI adapter support' CONFIG_OLTR
            Hmmmm..out-smarted myself.. didn't need to do the above addition!!
            
             My reason for doing this is to allow me to use the normal SuSE build and
            have the Olicom card selectable. This meant that I had to modify YAST2
              /usr/lib/YaST2/netcards.ycp   to add the selection.
            
              make dep
              make clean
              make bzImage
              make modules
              cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-tr
              cp System.map /boot/System.map-tr
              make modules_install
              cd /boot
              ln -sf vmlinuz-tr vmlinuz
              ln -sf System.map-tr System.map
            
              It works again. This time I tried to do some things in advance and
            screwed it up. Just take it a step at a time and fix the mistakes as
            they happen.