Getting OpenBSD to install...

I have a dell optiplex gx1 that is going to become a backup router. I have two Dlink de220t cards that I have in there (ISA, pnp, PITA). OpenBSD's installer finds one of them as a ne1000 clone (which it is) and proceeds to get a dhcp address from it... or tries.

It just times out all the time. Lights on the back are glowing, I get blinks on my switch, everything seems nominal, but dhcp is timing out. My other router logs the request, logs the response, but doesn't show acceptance. I don't quite know what's going on...

Call it a hunch, but I'd check to see how your IRQs are getting allocated. Dell BIOSes are just doubleplusunfgood. Combine that with PNP ISA and it seems like a bad recipe.

I guess the redeeming feature is that I can turn off pnp, and use a utility floppy that can set the IRQ's for me...

I used the dlink setup utility, and changed the IRQ's and base I/O addresses. OpenBSD installed properly (thanks a ton for that hunch!) and now I need to get it to detect the other card.

Somewhere I read that you could only have one ISA nic by default in the various *nixes... could somebody enlighten me?

turns out openbsd only looks for neX cards on three configurations. I used config to change it to the other card. Everything works smoothly now.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!