# fiber optic question (newbee)



## Dee_Ann (Jun 9, 2009)

Hi!

I have been using Linux for many years and have been using Suse for just about as long. I'm currently using OpenSuse 11 and KDE 4.2

OpenSuse has become very unstable and unusable in my opinion.
Not to bash it but I believe M$ has poisoned the well, the last stable release was pre-M$ sneak attack.

A few releases back it was very good stuff, never any problems, uptime in the range of months, only power failures ever too it down.

Now, it locks up 4-5 times a day always requiring a hardware reset and risk of data loss.  This is totally unacceptable.

A girlfriend of mine tells me that BSD is the stuff I want.
I trust her word.

Now the main question I have is, can I use my fiber optic network card in BSD?

It is an Allied Telesyn AT-2700FTX
Here is the info I have on it,


```
PCI 209.0: 0200 Ethernet controller
  [Created at pci.318]
  UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_1022_2000_0
  Unique ID: JNkJ.AEV7bJ1utwA
  Parent ID: vuMS.fnpiWG08KJ2
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0e.0/0000:02:09.0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:02:09.0
  Hardware Class: network
  Model: "Allied Telesyn International AT-2700FTX 10/100 Mb Fiber/Copper Fast Ethernet"
  Vendor: pci 0x1022 "AMD"
  Device: pci 0x2000 "79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE]"
  SubVendor: pci 0x1259 "Allied Telesyn International"
  SubDevice: pci 0x2702 "AT-2700FTX 10/100 Mb Fiber/Copper Fast Ethernet"
  Revision: 0x36
  Driver: "pcnet32"
  Driver Modules: "pcnet32"
  Device File: eth1
  I/O Ports: 0xa800-0xa81f (rw)
  Memory Range: 0xf6005000-0xf600501f (rw,non-prefetchable)
  Memory Range: 0x88100000-0x881fffff (ro,prefetchable,disabled)
  IRQ: 17 (2850230 events)
  HW Address: 00:0c:46:70:2e:a5
  Link detected: yes
  Module Alias: "pci:v00001022d00002000sv00001259sd00002702bc02sc00i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: pcnet32 is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe pcnet32"
  Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
  Attached to: #22 (PCI bridge)
```

If I were unable to use it that would really bum me out a lot as I'm all fiber optic here.

Another question I have, are there things like Flashpayer and such available?  If so, 32bit?  64bit?

I also have an Epson GT-10000 scanner that is supported on Linux, would it work on BSD?

Sorry to ask so many questions but I am really anxious to get a stable system going.  I'm also very much wanting to use ZFS, I plan to add a few external disc arrays soon.

Thank you!


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## fronclynne (Jun 9, 2009)

*You should run it through 4 times to be safe*

Based on 
	
	



```
. . .
 Vendor: pci 0x1022 "AMD"
  Device: pci 0x2000 "79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE]"
. . .
```
 it appears that the le(4) driver _should_ work.

You have several options for flash, more information at these threads:
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=4586
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=288

I hope someone else can give you pointers for your scanner.  I've always thought they were just printers running the wrong way, and based on that you should flip them upside down and compile the driver code after running it through rot13(6) twice.


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## phoenix (Jun 9, 2009)

Have a read through the following man pages.  They are the result of `$ man -k pcnet`:

pcn(4)
le(4)
awi(4)
I think pcn(4) covers your hardware.

You can boot off a Frenzy, FreeSBIE, PC-BSD LiveCD and see if it detects the NIC.  Or even boot off the LiveFS CD from FreeBSD.

As for Flash, search the forums.  There are several threads on getting Flash 9 and Flash 10 working in Mozilla Firefox 2 and 3.


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