There are several variants of the Intel Pro/1000 82556 chipset. GenMAC 2.20 officially supports the 82556MM (8086:104B). The 82556DM utilizes the same driver.

The enclosed is the same driver as that which ships with GenMAC 2.20. I have updated the NIF to properly set UNSUPPORTED NOTIMER as the options, and have made these uneditable.

The driver version in this package is 9.2.50.0. Newer versions, namely, 9.12.41.0 and 9.12.36.0 cause a hang at GenMAC initialization, possibly because of their increased size. I have not yet found any versions between 9.2.50.0 and 9.12.36.0 to test.

Installation:

Copy the contents of the nif directory to genmac\nif.
Copy the contents of the driver directory to genmac\driver.
Select your NIC from MPTS, complete your configuration, and reboot.

Notes:

Some newer Intel NICs (the 82556 series is among them) do not report their MAC addresses as GenMAC expects. Thus, they show as nul (netstat -n). This is a known issue, and must be resolved in the GenMAC code. Some intelligent switches, routers, and DHCP servers do not handle nul MAC addresses gracefully (according to the RFC, a single nul address should be as unique as any other string on a given network). Symptoms may include inability to route traffic, inability to transmit or receive packets, and/or inability to obtain DHCP-supplied configuration (IP address, default gateway, static routes, etc.).

I have also included WRND32.LOG in the driver directory. This should provide some baseline information, should you wish to compare it against your results.

Lewis Rosenthal
lgrosenthal@2rosenthals.com

2009-08-30

