RS/6000 Ethernet board, how do you activate the thick wire port

[drake at drake.almaden.ibm.com]

In article <2219 at csm9a.UUCP> gboice at csm9a.UUCP (R CC) writes:
>I tried 
>to utilize the thickwire port and got no response.  When I changed over to
>thinwire the network worked fine.  I also tried using a thick wire port
>on a 530, same problem.  Is there a change to the board (like a jumper setting)
>needed to utilize the thickwire port?

No change to the board, but a change to the software.  Log on as root,
run smit, select "devices", then "communication devices", then "ethernet
adapter", then "adapter", then "change/show characteristics of an ethernet
adapter".  It will show you a list of the ones it knows about; select
the one you want (probably en0).  Then you'll get a list of all the adapter's
attributes; one will be "adapter connector".  This will read either bnc
(thin) or dix (thick).  Use the tab key to toggle between them.  When it's
how you want it, press enter to change it, then f10 to exit smit.  Then
examine smit.script to see what command it executed in case you want to 
do it again without using the menus.

>Short of using thickwire I could rearrange the board placement on the bus
>so that the thinwire port would not be inhibited.  Is the board placement
>on the bus specific?

Sort of.  If you had the Ethernet port configured as "en0" and placed in
slot 2, then took it out and put it in slot 3, the system would decide that
en0 was down and that a new device, en1, had been plugged in.  Since no
configuration had been done for en1, it wouldn't be used for anything.  
If you move it, you'll have to redo the bnc/dix selection for en1, and will
have to reconfigure TCP/IP to use en1 instead of en0.  Run smit, select
Communications; select TCP/IP; select Minimum configuration; select en1;
then enter the IP addresses and domain names to be used for this adapter.

Opinions are my own.


Sam Drake / IBM Almaden Research Center 
Internet:  drake at ibm.com            BITNET:  DRAKE at ALMADEN
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