misc/43018: slightly misleading information about netbook hardware support

[bernhard%sdg.de@localhost]

>Number:         43018
>Category:       misc
>Synopsis:       slightly misleading information about netbook hardware support
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    misc-bug-people
>State:          open
>Class:          doc-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Fri Mar 19 18:25:00 +0000 2010
>Originator:     Bernhard Riedel
>Release:        5-stable
>Organization:
>Environment:
NetBSD atom 5.0_STABLE NetBSD 5.0_STABLE (GENERIC) #0: Sun Mar  7 21:22:12 CET 
2010  
root%monitor.crg.de@localhost:/sdata/test-5/obj/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC 
i386

>Description:
http://netbsd.org/ports/i386/netbook.html says about the Asus EeePC 901:

Ethernet: supported in 4.1
Wireless: supported in 4.0 (with patch)

I tested with 5-stable-201002180000Z/i386 and HEAD-201003180000Z/i386,
 both interfaces seem pretty useless.
the Ethernet attaches to ale0: (address partially obscured by me)

ale0 at pci2 dev 0 function 0: Attansic/Atheros L1E Ethernet
ale0: AR8113 (L2E RevA), ioapic0 pin 17
ale0: Ethernet address 00:23:54:xx:xx:xx
atphy0 at ale0 phy 0: L1 10/100/1000 PHY, rev. 9
atphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto

# ifconfig ale0
ale0: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        address: 00:23:54:xx:xx:xx
        media: Ethernet autoselect (none loopback)
        status: no carrier

, but ifconfig inet ... up only results in a stream of PHY register access 
error messages until I ifconfig down again.

Testing this with -current even made the NIC disappear completely,
 not even BIOS could see it anymore. I had to remove the battery to
 fix that!

Wireless shows up as
vendor 0x1814 product 0x0781 (miscellaneous network) at pci4 dev 0 function 0 
not configured

Didn't try the patchset for wireless, yet, plain old ethernet would be more 
useful.

>How-To-Repeat:
install NetBSD-5-stable or NetBSD-current (versions see above) on an Asus
EeePC 901 netbook, enable NIC in BIOS, connect NIC to switch, watch kernel 
messages, try to ifconfig up.
>Fix:
no fix... this belongs to >1 category (misc,kern,port-i386?) and class 
(doc-bug,sw-bug). I'm not sure if severity/priority are appropriate, either;)