Based on kernel version 4.16.1. Page generated on 2018-04-09 11:53 EST.
1 Linux and the 3Com EtherLink III Series Ethercards (driver v1.18c and higher) 2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 4 This file contains the instructions and caveats for v1.18c and higher versions 5 of the 3c509 driver. You should not use the driver without reading this file. 6 7 release 1.0 8 28 February 2002 9 Current maintainer (corrections to): 10 David Ruggiero <jdr@farfalle.com> 11 12 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 14 (0) Introduction 15 16 The following are notes and information on using the 3Com EtherLink III series 17 ethercards in Linux. These cards are commonly known by the most widely-used 18 card's 3Com model number, 3c509. They are all 10mb/s ISA-bus cards and shouldn't 19 be (but sometimes are) confused with the similarly-numbered PCI-bus "3c905" 20 (aka "Vortex" or "Boomerang") series. Kernel support for the 3c509 family is 21 provided by the module 3c509.c, which has code to support all of the following 22 models: 23 24 3c509 (original ISA card) 25 3c509B (later revision of the ISA card; supports full-duplex) 26 3c589 (PCMCIA) 27 3c589B (later revision of the 3c589; supports full-duplex) 28 3c579 (EISA) 29 30 Large portions of this documentation were heavily borrowed from the guide 31 written the original author of the 3c509 driver, Donald Becker. The master 32 copy of that document, which contains notes on older versions of the driver, 33 currently resides on Scyld web server: http://www.scyld.com/. 34 35 36 (1) Special Driver Features 37 38 Overriding card settings 39 40 The driver allows boot- or load-time overriding of the card's detected IOADDR, 41 IRQ, and transceiver settings, although this capability shouldn't generally be 42 needed except to enable full-duplex mode (see below). An example of the syntax 43 for LILO parameters for doing this: 44 45 ether=10,0x310,3,0x3c509,eth0 46 47 This configures the first found 3c509 card for IRQ 10, base I/O 0x310, and 48 transceiver type 3 (10base2). The flag "0x3c509" must be set to avoid conflicts 49 with other card types when overriding the I/O address. When the driver is 50 loaded as a module, only the IRQ may be overridden. For example, 51 setting two cards to IRQ10 and IRQ11 is done by using the irq module 52 option: 53 54 options 3c509 irq=10,11 55 56 57 (2) Full-duplex mode 58 59 The v1.18c driver added support for the 3c509B's full-duplex capabilities. 60 In order to enable and successfully use full-duplex mode, three conditions 61 must be met: 62 63 (a) You must have a Etherlink III card model whose hardware supports full- 64 duplex operations. Currently, the only members of the 3c509 family that are 65 positively known to support full-duplex are the 3c509B (ISA bus) and 3c589B 66 (PCMCIA) cards. Cards without the "B" model designation do *not* support 67 full-duplex mode; these include the original 3c509 (no "B"), the original 68 3c589, the 3c529 (MCA bus), and the 3c579 (EISA bus). 69 70 (b) You must be using your card's 10baseT transceiver (i.e., the RJ-45 71 connector), not its AUI (thick-net) or 10base2 (thin-net/coax) interfaces. 72 AUI and 10base2 network cabling is physically incapable of full-duplex 73 operation. 74 75 (c) Most importantly, your 3c509B must be connected to a link partner that is 76 itself full-duplex capable. This is almost certainly one of two things: a full- 77 duplex-capable Ethernet switch (*not* a hub), or a full-duplex-capable NIC on 78 another system that's connected directly to the 3c509B via a crossover cable. 79 80 Full-duplex mode can be enabled using 'ethtool'. 81 82 /////Extremely important caution concerning full-duplex mode///// 83 Understand that the 3c509B's hardware's full-duplex support is much more 84 limited than that provide by more modern network interface cards. Although 85 at the physical layer of the network it fully supports full-duplex operation, 86 the card was designed before the current Ethernet auto-negotiation (N-way) 87 spec was written. This means that the 3c509B family ***cannot and will not 88 auto-negotiate a full-duplex connection with its link partner under any 89 circumstances, no matter how it is initialized***. If the full-duplex mode 90 of the 3c509B is enabled, its link partner will very likely need to be 91 independently _forced_ into full-duplex mode as well; otherwise various nasty 92 failures will occur - at the very least, you'll see massive numbers of packet 93 collisions. This is one of very rare circumstances where disabling auto- 94 negotiation and forcing the duplex mode of a network interface card or switch 95 would ever be necessary or desirable. 96 97 98 (3) Available Transceiver Types 99 100 For versions of the driver v1.18c and above, the available transceiver types are: 101 102 0 transceiver type from EEPROM config (normally 10baseT); force half-duplex 103 1 AUI (thick-net / DB15 connector) 104 2 (undefined) 105 3 10base2 (thin-net == coax / BNC connector) 106 4 10baseT (RJ-45 connector); force half-duplex mode 107 8 transceiver type and duplex mode taken from card's EEPROM config settings 108 12 10baseT (RJ-45 connector); force full-duplex mode 109 110 Prior to driver version 1.18c, only transceiver codes 0-4 were supported. Note 111 that the new transceiver codes 8 and 12 are the *only* ones that will enable 112 full-duplex mode, no matter what the card's detected EEPROM settings might be. 113 This insured that merely upgrading the driver from an earlier version would 114 never automatically enable full-duplex mode in an existing installation; 115 it must always be explicitly enabled via one of these code in order to be 116 activated. 117 118 The transceiver type can be changed using 'ethtool'. 119 120 121 (4a) Interpretation of error messages and common problems 122 123 Error Messages 124 125 eth0: Infinite loop in interrupt, status 2011. 126 These are "mostly harmless" message indicating that the driver had too much 127 work during that interrupt cycle. With a status of 0x2011 you are receiving 128 packets faster than they can be removed from the card. This should be rare 129 or impossible in normal operation. Possible causes of this error report are: 130 131 - a "green" mode enabled that slows the processor down when there is no 132 keyboard activity. 133 134 - some other device or device driver hogging the bus or disabling interrupts. 135 Check /proc/interrupts for excessive interrupt counts. The timer tick 136 interrupt should always be incrementing faster than the others. 137 138 No received packets 139 If a 3c509, 3c562 or 3c589 can successfully transmit packets, but never 140 receives packets (as reported by /proc/net/dev or 'ifconfig') you likely 141 have an interrupt line problem. Check /proc/interrupts to verify that the 142 card is actually generating interrupts. If the interrupt count is not 143 increasing you likely have a physical conflict with two devices trying to 144 use the same ISA IRQ line. The common conflict is with a sound card on IRQ10 145 or IRQ5, and the easiest solution is to move the 3c509 to a different 146 interrupt line. If the device is receiving packets but 'ping' doesn't work, 147 you have a routing problem. 148 149 Tx Carrier Errors Reported in /proc/net/dev 150 If an EtherLink III appears to transmit packets, but the "Tx carrier errors" 151 field in /proc/net/dev increments as quickly as the Tx packet count, you 152 likely have an unterminated network or the incorrect media transceiver selected. 153 154 3c509B card is not detected on machines with an ISA PnP BIOS. 155 While the updated driver works with most PnP BIOS programs, it does not work 156 with all. This can be fixed by disabling PnP support using the 3Com-supplied 157 setup program. 158 159 3c509 card is not detected on overclocked machines 160 Increase the delay time in id_read_eeprom() from the current value, 500, 161 to an absurdly high value, such as 5000. 162 163 164 (4b) Decoding Status and Error Messages 165 166 The bits in the main status register are: 167 168 value description 169 0x01 Interrupt latch 170 0x02 Tx overrun, or Rx underrun 171 0x04 Tx complete 172 0x08 Tx FIFO room available 173 0x10 A complete Rx packet has arrived 174 0x20 A Rx packet has started to arrive 175 0x40 The driver has requested an interrupt 176 0x80 Statistics counter nearly full 177 178 The bits in the transmit (Tx) status word are: 179 180 value description 181 0x02 Out-of-window collision. 182 0x04 Status stack overflow (normally impossible). 183 0x08 16 collisions. 184 0x10 Tx underrun (not enough PCI bus bandwidth). 185 0x20 Tx jabber. 186 0x40 Tx interrupt requested. 187 0x80 Status is valid (this should always be set). 188 189 190 When a transmit error occurs the driver produces a status message such as 191 192 eth0: Transmit error, Tx status register 82 193 194 The two values typically seen here are: 195 196 0x82 197 Out of window collision. This typically occurs when some other Ethernet 198 host is incorrectly set to full duplex on a half duplex network. 199 200 0x88 201 16 collisions. This typically occurs when the network is exceptionally busy 202 or when another host doesn't correctly back off after a collision. If this 203 error is mixed with 0x82 errors it is the result of a host incorrectly set 204 to full duplex (see above). 205 206 Both of these errors are the result of network problems that should be 207 corrected. They do not represent driver malfunction. 208 209 210 (5) Revision history (this file) 211 212 28Feb02 v1.0 DR New; major portions based on Becker original 3c509 docs