Re: kern/37723: ne* AX88190 Fast Ethernet 16-bit PC Card: where did the card go? problem

[David Holland <dholland-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Tue, Jan 08, 2008 at 06:55:00PM +0000, comfooc%gmail.com@localhost wrote:
 > I have Micronet Fast Ethernet card and it doesn't work since 2.0
 > Release. 1.6 Release worked fine with it but latest releases don't.
 > 
 > This is my problem:
 > 
 > ne2 at pcmcia0 function 0: <Fast Ethernet, 16-bit PC Card, 3.0, AX88190>
 > ne2: where did the card go?
 > 
 > (under it is linux seen as AX88790)

The issue, I think, is that the ne driver reruns the match logic (that
finds the card) when it goes to actually attach the driver. But it
adds a couple of extra conditions. If one of those fails, it keeps
looking through the list of card types for another match. So (if I
understand everything correctly, which I may not) the card type that
prints may not be the card type that it actually tries to attach and
run under.

This seems itself like a bug, though perhaps not a serious one if the
card list is complete and accurate.

What I think is happening, though, is that the card initially matches
the AX88190 entry (the one in if_ne_pcmcia.c that contains
PCMCIA_CIS_LANTECH_FASTNETTX), so it prints as an AX88190, but then
when it goes to attach one of the extra tests fails. So then the
driver keeps looking for another card type, and while no other type in
the list matches the CIS strings, it might match one by manufacturer
and product. And it finds one, so it doesn't error out at that point,
but that card type doesn't have the I-am-an-AX88190 flag set, so it
doesn't run the code that sets nsc->sc_type accordingly; this causes
it to try the generic ne2000 identification code inside ne2000_attach
and that fails, leading to the error message.

The two extra tests that might apply are (1) the one marked "XXX This
is highly bogus" at line 675 of if_ne_pcmcia.c, and also (2) the
prefix of the ethernet address.

Since 1.6 also checked the hardware address, and the diff from 1.6 to
2.0 doesn't *look* like the stuff pertaining to (1) would have changed
with your card (it does some extra things if it thinks it has an
88790, but it doesn't look like it would think your card is one) my
guess is that one of the new card definitions in 2.0 matches your card
and comes before some *other* card definition that also matches your
card but *is* tagged as an AX88190.

Or at least that's the only explanation that makes sense, even though
it doesn't seem that plausible. Maybe something else in my analysis is
wrong.

In any case, it would probably be helpful if you could find out the
PCMCIA vendor and product IDs for your card, and also the CIS
strings. I'm not sure how one is supposed to get this stuff (is there
a PCMCIA equivalent of lspci?) but with luck if you don't know someone
else can tell you...

It might also be helpful to have the prefix (the first three bytes) of
the card's ethernet address.

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost