Notes On Using Proteon's Line of Ethernet Adapters
with the Linux Operating System

Proteon makes a line of high quality, low cost Ethernet NIC cards, hubs, switches and such. The network cards work well with Linux, but little information was evident on the net to explain that. This page provides the basic information to get you started using Proteon's adapters with the Linux operating system.

ISA Bus Cards

p1370-BA 10BaseT Adapter
p1370-EA 10BaseT and 10Base2 Adapter

Other than the presence or absence of the 10Base2 (Thinnet, BNC) connector, these cards are identical. They are NE2000 cards, and will work with the NE2000 driver in Linux distributions going back a long way.

A DOS based setup utility comes with the cards. The way I set up the adapters is to temporarily boot the Linux machine from a DOS floppy, and then run the configuration program on the config floppy. Using this, I set up the Interrupt line to IRQ 15 (unused for anything else in my systems) and select the media type.

If you don't already have NE2000 support in your kernel, you'll need to go to /usr/src/linux, and do a make config. Answer YES to the NE2000 support question, and you should be all set. Make sure you read the README files in /usr/src/linux after yuo build your kernel and before you reboot or else you'll waste some time getting your system to boot again. This isn't related to the Ethernet card, it's just a general tip so you don't do what I did once. It's actually not a bad idea to put new kernels onto a floppy first, and boot it from there. If it doesn't work, you just pop the floppy and reboot and you're back where you were.

PCI Bus Cards

p1670-EA
This is the present adapter used for the connectivity of the www.senie.com web site. This board is based on the DEC Tulip chipset. The drivers to support this board are included in relatively recent Linux distributions. I use the Red Hat Linux distribution which has the drivers. I presently am running RedHat 4.0, which is based on a 2.0.18 kernel. This kernel has the proper driver integrated into a loadable module.

If you are running an older Linux kernel, such as 1.2.13 Read instructions for older Linux kernels for additional information.

PC Card Adapters

p1470-EA 10BaseT / 10Base2 Card
I don't have any machines running Linux which have PC Card slots, and thus have not done any testing with the p1470-EA adapter.

Someone else apparently has done such testing, as I've seen this card listed in the Linux Hardware Compatability HOWTO.

EISA Adapters

p1970-JA 10BaseT / 10Base2 / AUI
I don't have any EISA machines in my network, and thus have not done any testing with the p1970-JA adapter.
Send any comments or suggestions to dan@senie.com
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