SysKonnect ethernet support for Asus A8VE Deluxe Motherboard?

SysKonnect ethernet support for Asus A8VE Deluxe Motherboard?

[Hamish Marson]

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Hi all.

I just installed Gentoo distribution on a new PC for a friend who's
new to Linux, and discovered that although SysKonnect kindly provide
full source code drivers for their various products on their website,
that even the latest released kernel sources (i.e. 2.6.12) still don't
support the device on this motherboard (Along with a whole host of
other PCI id's that appear in the syskonnect sources).

Although it's easy enough when you fully understand what's hapening,
it a little disconcerting for the newbie user (Which my friend is)
when confronted by booting their new PC & discovereing the Linux
doesn't support their onboard ethernet card...

I've logged a bug on gentoo.org about it, but thought I'd ask, if
there's any reason that the syskonnect (sk98lin) drivers are so back
leve in the kernel sources when syskonnect seem to have published the
drivers for so many more of their devices in source...

TIA

Hamish.
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Re: SysKonnect ethernet support for Asus A8VE Deluxe Motherboard?

[Daniel Drake]

Hamish Marson wrote:
> I just installed Gentoo distribution on a new PC for a friend who's
> new to Linux, and discovered that although SysKonnect kindly provide
> full source code drivers for their various products on their website,
> that even the latest released kernel sources (i.e. 2.6.12) still don't
> support the device on this motherboard (Along with a whole host of
> other PCI id's that appear in the syskonnect sources).

Gentoo 2.6.12 kernels provide the skge driver which supports this hardware (I
believe). skge will be included in mainline 2.6.13.

> I've logged a bug on gentoo.org about it, but thought I'd ask, if
> there's any reason that the syskonnect (sk98lin) drivers are so back
> leve in the kernel sources when syskonnect seem to have published the
> drivers for so many more of their devices in source...

The driver updates that syskonnect released are ugly and have been rejected by
the network driver maintainers. skge was written as a response to this.

The very latest sk98lin updates add support for the new Yukon-II PCI-express
adapters. These are not supported by skge -- the Yukon-II is very different
and will eventually be supported by a separate driver. The techniques which
sk98lin uses to support two vastly different network chipsets (yukon/yukon-II)
in the same driver are generally not accepted in the kernel.

Daniel

Re: SysKonnect ethernet support for Asus A8VE Deluxe Motherboard?

[Mws]

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On Wednesday 13 July 2005 13:51, you wrote:
> Hamish Marson wrote:
> > I just installed Gentoo distribution on a new PC for a friend who's
> > new to Linux, and discovered that although SysKonnect kindly provide
> > full source code drivers for their various products on their website,
> > that even the latest released kernel sources (i.e. 2.6.12) still don't
> > support the device on this motherboard (Along with a whole host of
> > other PCI id's that appear in the syskonnect sources).
> 
> Gentoo 2.6.12 kernels provide the skge driver which supports this hardware (I
> believe). skge will be included in mainline 2.6.13.
> 
> > I've logged a bug on gentoo.org about it, but thought I'd ask, if
> > there's any reason that the syskonnect (sk98lin) drivers are so back
> > leve in the kernel sources when syskonnect seem to have published the
> > drivers for so many more of their devices in source...
> 
> The driver updates that syskonnect released are ugly and have been rejected by
> the network driver maintainers. skge was written as a response to this.
> 
> The very latest sk98lin updates add support for the new Yukon-II PCI-express
> adapters. These are not supported by skge -- the Yukon-II is very different
> and will eventually be supported by a separate driver. The techniques which
> sk98lin uses to support two vastly different network chipsets (yukon/yukon-II)
> in the same driver are generally not accepted in the kernel.

but they have one advantage for now. they do work.

i am using them for about 9 months now including upgrades.

regards
marcel

> 
> Daniel
> -
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