1. Introduction

1.1. Special Thanks

Thanks to Mark Swanson, Peter De Schrijver, David Morris, Paul Norton and everyone else who has contributed to the Token Ring code and drivers over the years.

Thanks also to the many people and companies who have provided hardware and technical documents to enable the drivers to be written in the first place.

Special Thanks to Mike Eckhoff the originator of this HOWTO, and Tom Gall for the previous version, and to Matthew Marsh for hosting the website and mailing list!

And, finally, thanks to all to subscribers to the linux-tr mailing list who have provided support, feedback, testing and thanks over the years. It wouldn't have been worth it without your continued support and gratitude.

1.2. Copyright Information

This documument is copyright (c) 1995-1998 by Michael Eckhoff, copyright(c) 2000 by Tom Gall and copyright (c) 2001 by Mike Phillips.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation, with no Invariant sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.

A copy of the license is included in Appendix A

If you have any question, please contact <linux-howto@linuxdoc.org>

1.3. Disclaimer

No liability for the contents of this document can be accepted. Use the concepts, examples and other content at your own risk. As this is a new edition of this document, there may be errors and inaccuracies, that may of course be damaging to your system. Proceed with caution, and although this is highly unlikely, the authors do not take any responsibility for that.

All copyrights are held by their respective owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.

Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements.

You are strongly recommended to take a backup of your system before major installation and backups at regular intervals.

1.4. New Versions

The latest version of this document can always be found at Linux Token Ring Project under the Documentation section.

The latest version of this HOWTO will always be made available on the Linux Token Ring Project website, in a variety of formats:

• HTML,

• Plain text,

• Adobe Acrobat pdf,

• Postscript,

• SGML source,

1.5. Credits

In this version I have the pleasure of acknowleding:

IBM for providing hardware, technical documentation and technical support when the tech docs didn't quite seem enough.

Madge for providing their hardware to test with.

3Com for proving the technical documents to allow the 3c359 driver to be developed.

1.6. Feedback

Feedback is most certainly welcome for this document. Without your submissions and input, this document wouldn't exist. Please send your additions, comments and criticisms to the following email address: <mikep@linuxtr.net>