Dc driven broken in pfSense 1.0rc1?

skriefal · Jul 25, 2006, 3:11 AM

I was hoping to use pfSense as a firewall and dual-WAN router for my home network, but have encountered a problem with the driver for my PCI NICs. Both cards are a few years old and made by NDC/Sohoware, and are on the list of supported hardware for pfSense. Unfortunately neither card works with pfSense. As soon as pfSense discovers the cards, the LINK LEDs turn on and remain stuck on – even if no network cable is connected. It does seem to select the correct driver, and labels the cards dc0 and dc1 -- but I have been unable to get them to actually work.

I've tried the cards with pfSense in two PCs and got the same results. I've also tried testing with only one of the cards installed -- still doesn't work. I also tried a Linksys card that uses the same driver -- again, same results. Finally, I tried booting Devil-Linux. It found the cards and they work... so this seems to be unique to pfSense (and perhaps other FreeBSD-based packages).

Any suggestions? Anyone have a working pfSense installation with NICs using the 'dc' driver?

(I've searched here and elsewhere, and have found no useful information...)

hoba · Jul 25, 2006, 3:19 AM

Check out your bios settings. You should turn off plug'n'play os and make sure the bios configures the cards properly.

skriefal · Jul 26, 2006, 2:42 AM

@hoba:

Check out your bios settings. You should turn off plug'n'play os and make sure the bios configures the cards properly.

After posting the earlier message, I searched my spare parts bin and found two other 10/100 NICs – an Intel (yay), and a Realtek (ugh). I swapped those in place of the NDCs, and pfSense was happy. The integrated 3Com NIC also works without problems. I may go back at some point and use one of the NDCs to replace the Realtek, and I'll check the PnP/BIOS settings at that time. Thanks for the help!

Scott