On Thu, Oct 28, 1999 at 11:00:30PM -0400, Brad Spencer wrote:
   > 
   > I have a 4 port D-LINK ethernet card, model DFE-570TX.  This card has 4
   > 21143 ethernet chips on it.  I have some of questions that I am hoping
   > that someone can answer:
   > 
   > 1) The tlp driver appears to have some support for the 21142 chip and
   > perhaps some 21143 support, however, that driver complains that it can't
   > handle my card.  The last thing printed was a line something like:
   > 
   > 	DECchip 21143 Ethernet, pass 4.1
   > 
   > I suspect that it might not be too bad to get this working, but it is
   > unclear to me what is required.  [before I started I made sure I had
   > 'options TLP_MATCH_ ...' in my kernel config.  I have another machine with
   > a 21041 in it and the tlp driver works great there].

   As far as I know the 21143 is not supported yet by tlp. Jason could certainly
   add precisions about this :)

I wasn't really sure.  The files dev/ic/tulip.c and dev/pci/if_tlp_pci.c
both mention it in defines, but I didn't know if the support was complete.

   > 2) Falling back on the de driver...  I have a 10/100 ethernet switch that
   > can do full duplex and the auto probe finds that it is connected to a
   > 100Mbits full duplex port, as expected.  However, it appears that an
   > output error is generated [or at least recorded] for every every packet
   > sent down the wire.  Slightly annoying, but I don't know if this is
   > significant.

   What swicth do you have ?
   I have a cisco 10/100 switch I don't have this behavior under 1.4.x.
   Maybe your board and switch dissagree on the half/full duplex settings ?

The switch is a Linksys 5 port.  I also have an 8 port down the hall in
the closet.

   > 3) The de driver does not appear to be able to change the media type
   > properly on my card.  Is this a known problem??  That is, an 'ifconfig de0
   > media 10baset' does not appear to set the media to 10 base twisted pair,
   > although it claims to have set the media.  Likewise for full and half
   > duplex.  [At least the switches blinking lights do not seem to indicate a
   > change in media type].

   This happens sometimes, it's because your switch doesn't restart
   autonegotiation. Off/On on the switch may be a way to force it to
   renegotiate :)

I thought this, but I don't think that this is the problem.

In my haste last night, I failed to looked at the blinking lights on the
back of the ethernet card [or cards.  Is a multi-port ethernet card really
more then one??  Probably...].  Both the card and the switch agree that
they are doing 100Mbits full duplex.  However, no amount of ifconfig-ing
the ethernet port will cause a change in the port status, according to its
lights.  That is, I can assert with ifconfig that I want 10baset, but the
lights on the ethernet card will still indicate that it is 100Mbits full
duplex.  The only exception to this seems to be if I set the media to
"autoselect".  The lights on the switch blink for a second and they
reappear as 100Mbits full duplex.  [I couldn't manage to see both the
ethernet port lights and type on the keyboard at the same time, but I
suspect they reset also].

My only conclusion is that the media type does not seem to be selectable,
but autoselect seems to function mostly ok.

   > 4) The de driver reports stuff like this before calming down:
   > 
   > de0: abnormal interrupt: transmit underflow (raising TX threshold to 128|512)
   > de0: abnormal interrupt: transmit underflow (raising TX threshold to 160|1024)
   > de0: abnormal interrupt: transmit underflow (switching to store-and-forward mode)
   > 
   > I really don't know what the above indicates, as such...  except to note
   > that it is complaints about sending packets...

   Hal Murray already explained this.

Yes, and thanks for all of the info....

   --
   Manuel Bouyer, LIP6, Universite Paris VI.           Manuel.Bouyer@lip6.fr
   --



Brad Spencer - brad@anduin.eldar.org   http://anduin.eldar.org
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