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| 1 | +.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 |
| 2 | +
|
| 3 | +============================================================================= |
| 4 | +Linux and the 3Com EtherLink III Series Ethercards (driver v1.18c and higher) |
| 5 | +============================================================================= |
| 6 | + |
| 7 | +This file contains the instructions and caveats for v1.18c and higher versions |
| 8 | +of the 3c509 driver. You should not use the driver without reading this file. |
| 9 | + |
| 10 | +release 1.0 |
| 11 | + |
| 12 | +28 February 2002 |
| 13 | + |
| 14 | +Current maintainer (corrections to): |
| 15 | + Maciej W. Rozycki <macro@orcam.me.uk> |
| 16 | + |
| 17 | +Introduction |
| 18 | +============ |
| 19 | + |
| 20 | +The following are notes and information on using the 3Com EtherLink III series |
| 21 | +ethercards in Linux. These cards are commonly known by the most widely-used |
| 22 | +card's 3Com model number, 3c509. They are all 10mb/s ISA-bus cards and shouldn't |
| 23 | +be (but sometimes are) confused with the similarly-numbered PCI-bus "3c905" |
| 24 | +(aka "Vortex" or "Boomerang") series. Kernel support for the 3c509 family is |
| 25 | +provided by the module 3c509.c, which has code to support all of the following |
| 26 | +models: |
| 27 | + |
| 28 | + - 3c509 (original ISA card) |
| 29 | + - 3c509B (later revision of the ISA card; supports full-duplex) |
| 30 | + - 3c589 (PCMCIA) |
| 31 | + - 3c589B (later revision of the 3c589; supports full-duplex) |
| 32 | + - 3c579 (EISA) |
| 33 | + |
| 34 | +Large portions of this documentation were heavily borrowed from the guide |
| 35 | +written the original author of the 3c509 driver, Donald Becker. The master |
| 36 | +copy of that document, which contains notes on older versions of the driver, |
| 37 | +currently resides on Scyld web server: http://www.scyld.com/. |
| 38 | + |
| 39 | + |
| 40 | +Special Driver Features |
| 41 | +======================= |
| 42 | + |
| 43 | +Overriding card settings |
| 44 | + |
| 45 | +The driver allows boot- or load-time overriding of the card's detected IOADDR, |
| 46 | +IRQ, and transceiver settings, although this capability shouldn't generally be |
| 47 | +needed except to enable full-duplex mode (see below). An example of the syntax |
| 48 | +for LILO parameters for doing this:: |
| 49 | + |
| 50 | + ether=10,0x310,3,0x3c509,eth0 |
| 51 | + |
| 52 | +This configures the first found 3c509 card for IRQ 10, base I/O 0x310, and |
| 53 | +transceiver type 3 (10base2). The flag "0x3c509" must be set to avoid conflicts |
| 54 | +with other card types when overriding the I/O address. When the driver is |
| 55 | +loaded as a module, only the IRQ may be overridden. For example, |
| 56 | +setting two cards to IRQ10 and IRQ11 is done by using the irq module |
| 57 | +option:: |
| 58 | + |
| 59 | + options 3c509 irq=10,11 |
| 60 | + |
| 61 | + |
| 62 | +Full-duplex mode |
| 63 | +================ |
| 64 | + |
| 65 | +The v1.18c driver added support for the 3c509B's full-duplex capabilities. |
| 66 | +In order to enable and successfully use full-duplex mode, three conditions |
| 67 | +must be met: |
| 68 | + |
| 69 | +(a) You must have a Etherlink III card model whose hardware supports full- |
| 70 | +duplex operations. Currently, the only members of the 3c509 family that are |
| 71 | +positively known to support full-duplex are the 3c509B (ISA bus) and 3c589B |
| 72 | +(PCMCIA) cards. Cards without the "B" model designation do *not* support |
| 73 | +full-duplex mode; these include the original 3c509 (no "B"), the original |
| 74 | +3c589, the 3c529 (MCA bus), and the 3c579 (EISA bus). |
| 75 | + |
| 76 | +(b) You must be using your card's 10baseT transceiver (i.e., the RJ-45 |
| 77 | +connector), not its AUI (thick-net) or 10base2 (thin-net/coax) interfaces. |
| 78 | +AUI and 10base2 network cabling is physically incapable of full-duplex |
| 79 | +operation. |
| 80 | + |
| 81 | +(c) Most importantly, your 3c509B must be connected to a link partner that is |
| 82 | +itself full-duplex capable. This is almost certainly one of two things: a full- |
| 83 | +duplex-capable Ethernet switch (*not* a hub), or a full-duplex-capable NIC on |
| 84 | +another system that's connected directly to the 3c509B via a crossover cable. |
| 85 | + |
| 86 | +Full-duplex mode can be enabled using 'ethtool'. |
| 87 | + |
| 88 | +.. warning:: |
| 89 | + |
| 90 | + Extremely important caution concerning full-duplex mode |
| 91 | + |
| 92 | + Understand that the 3c509B's hardware's full-duplex support is much more |
| 93 | + limited than that provide by more modern network interface cards. Although |
| 94 | + at the physical layer of the network it fully supports full-duplex operation, |
| 95 | + the card was designed before the current Ethernet auto-negotiation (N-way) |
| 96 | + spec was written. This means that the 3c509B family ***cannot and will not |
| 97 | + auto-negotiate a full-duplex connection with its link partner under any |
| 98 | + circumstances, no matter how it is initialized***. If the full-duplex mode |
| 99 | + of the 3c509B is enabled, its link partner will very likely need to be |
| 100 | + independently _forced_ into full-duplex mode as well; otherwise various nasty |
| 101 | + failures will occur - at the very least, you'll see massive numbers of packet |
| 102 | + collisions. This is one of very rare circumstances where disabling auto- |
| 103 | + negotiation and forcing the duplex mode of a network interface card or switch |
| 104 | + would ever be necessary or desirable. |
| 105 | + |
| 106 | + |
| 107 | +Available Transceiver Types |
| 108 | +=========================== |
| 109 | + |
| 110 | +For versions of the driver v1.18c and above, the available transceiver types are: |
| 111 | + |
| 112 | +== ========================================================================= |
| 113 | +0 transceiver type from EEPROM config (normally 10baseT); force half-duplex |
| 114 | +1 AUI (thick-net / DB15 connector) |
| 115 | +2 (undefined) |
| 116 | +3 10base2 (thin-net == coax / BNC connector) |
| 117 | +4 10baseT (RJ-45 connector); force half-duplex mode |
| 118 | +8 transceiver type and duplex mode taken from card's EEPROM config settings |
| 119 | +12 10baseT (RJ-45 connector); force full-duplex mode |
| 120 | +== ========================================================================= |
| 121 | + |
| 122 | +Prior to driver version 1.18c, only transceiver codes 0-4 were supported. Note |
| 123 | +that the new transceiver codes 8 and 12 are the *only* ones that will enable |
| 124 | +full-duplex mode, no matter what the card's detected EEPROM settings might be. |
| 125 | +This insured that merely upgrading the driver from an earlier version would |
| 126 | +never automatically enable full-duplex mode in an existing installation; |
| 127 | +it must always be explicitly enabled via one of these code in order to be |
| 128 | +activated. |
| 129 | + |
| 130 | +The transceiver type can be changed using 'ethtool'. |
| 131 | + |
| 132 | + |
| 133 | +Interpretation of error messages and common problems |
| 134 | +---------------------------------------------------- |
| 135 | + |
| 136 | +Error Messages |
| 137 | +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |
| 138 | + |
| 139 | +eth0: Infinite loop in interrupt, status 2011. |
| 140 | +These are "mostly harmless" message indicating that the driver had too much |
| 141 | +work during that interrupt cycle. With a status of 0x2011 you are receiving |
| 142 | +packets faster than they can be removed from the card. This should be rare |
| 143 | +or impossible in normal operation. Possible causes of this error report are: |
| 144 | + |
| 145 | + - a "green" mode enabled that slows the processor down when there is no |
| 146 | + keyboard activity. |
| 147 | + |
| 148 | + - some other device or device driver hogging the bus or disabling interrupts. |
| 149 | + Check /proc/interrupts for excessive interrupt counts. The timer tick |
| 150 | + interrupt should always be incrementing faster than the others. |
| 151 | + |
| 152 | +No received packets |
| 153 | +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |
| 154 | + |
| 155 | +If a 3c509, 3c562 or 3c589 can successfully transmit packets, but never |
| 156 | +receives packets (as reported by /proc/net/dev or 'ifconfig') you likely |
| 157 | +have an interrupt line problem. Check /proc/interrupts to verify that the |
| 158 | +card is actually generating interrupts. If the interrupt count is not |
| 159 | +increasing you likely have a physical conflict with two devices trying to |
| 160 | +use the same ISA IRQ line. The common conflict is with a sound card on IRQ10 |
| 161 | +or IRQ5, and the easiest solution is to move the 3c509 to a different |
| 162 | +interrupt line. If the device is receiving packets but 'ping' doesn't work, |
| 163 | +you have a routing problem. |
| 164 | + |
| 165 | +Tx Carrier Errors Reported in /proc/net/dev |
| 166 | +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |
| 167 | + |
| 168 | + |
| 169 | +If an EtherLink III appears to transmit packets, but the "Tx carrier errors" |
| 170 | +field in /proc/net/dev increments as quickly as the Tx packet count, you |
| 171 | +likely have an unterminated network or the incorrect media transceiver selected. |
| 172 | + |
| 173 | +3c509B card is not detected on machines with an ISA PnP BIOS. |
| 174 | +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |
| 175 | + |
| 176 | +While the updated driver works with most PnP BIOS programs, it does not work |
| 177 | +with all. This can be fixed by disabling PnP support using the 3Com-supplied |
| 178 | +setup program. |
| 179 | + |
| 180 | +3c509 card is not detected on overclocked machines |
| 181 | +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |
| 182 | + |
| 183 | +Increase the delay time in id_read_eeprom() from the current value, 500, |
| 184 | +to an absurdly high value, such as 5000. |
| 185 | + |
| 186 | + |
| 187 | +Decoding Status and Error Messages |
| 188 | +---------------------------------- |
| 189 | + |
| 190 | + |
| 191 | +The bits in the main status register are: |
| 192 | + |
| 193 | +===== ====================================== |
| 194 | +value description |
| 195 | +===== ====================================== |
| 196 | +0x01 Interrupt latch |
| 197 | +0x02 Tx overrun, or Rx underrun |
| 198 | +0x04 Tx complete |
| 199 | +0x08 Tx FIFO room available |
| 200 | +0x10 A complete Rx packet has arrived |
| 201 | +0x20 A Rx packet has started to arrive |
| 202 | +0x40 The driver has requested an interrupt |
| 203 | +0x80 Statistics counter nearly full |
| 204 | +===== ====================================== |
| 205 | + |
| 206 | +The bits in the transmit (Tx) status word are: |
| 207 | + |
| 208 | +===== ============================================ |
| 209 | +value description |
| 210 | +===== ============================================ |
| 211 | +0x02 Out-of-window collision. |
| 212 | +0x04 Status stack overflow (normally impossible). |
| 213 | +0x08 16 collisions. |
| 214 | +0x10 Tx underrun (not enough PCI bus bandwidth). |
| 215 | +0x20 Tx jabber. |
| 216 | +0x40 Tx interrupt requested. |
| 217 | +0x80 Status is valid (this should always be set). |
| 218 | +===== ============================================ |
| 219 | + |
| 220 | + |
| 221 | +When a transmit error occurs the driver produces a status message such as:: |
| 222 | + |
| 223 | + eth0: Transmit error, Tx status register 82 |
| 224 | + |
| 225 | +The two values typically seen here are: |
| 226 | + |
| 227 | +0x82 |
| 228 | +^^^^ |
| 229 | + |
| 230 | +Out of window collision. This typically occurs when some other Ethernet |
| 231 | +host is incorrectly set to full duplex on a half duplex network. |
| 232 | + |
| 233 | +0x88 |
| 234 | +^^^^ |
| 235 | + |
| 236 | +16 collisions. This typically occurs when the network is exceptionally busy |
| 237 | +or when another host doesn't correctly back off after a collision. If this |
| 238 | +error is mixed with 0x82 errors it is the result of a host incorrectly set |
| 239 | +to full duplex (see above). |
| 240 | + |
| 241 | +Both of these errors are the result of network problems that should be |
| 242 | +corrected. They do not represent driver malfunction. |
| 243 | + |
| 244 | + |
| 245 | +Revision history (this file) |
| 246 | +============================ |
| 247 | + |
| 248 | +28Feb02 v1.0 DR New; major portions based on Becker original 3c509 docs |
| 249 | + |
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