le
- AMD Am7900 LANCE and Am79C9xx ILACC/PCnet Ethernet interface driver
SYNOPSIS
To compile this driver into the kernel,
place the following line in your
kernel configuration file:
device le
Alternatively, to load the driver as a
module at boot time, place the following line in
loader.conf5:
if_le_load="YES"
For C-Bus non-PnP adapters, the port address and the IRQ number have to be
specified in
/boot/device.hints
hint.le.0.at=isahint.le.0.port=0x03d0hint.le.0.irq=6
For ISA non-PnP adapters, the port address as well as the IRQ and the DRQ
numbers have to be specified in
/boot/device.hints
hint.le.0.at=isahint.le.0.port=0x280hint.le.0.irq=10hint.le.0.drq=0
DESCRIPTION
The
driver provides support for Ethernet adapters based on the
AMD Am7990
and
Am79C90
(CMOS, pin-compatible)
Local Area Network Controller for Ethernet
(LANCE
)
chips.
The
driver also supports Ethernet adapters based on the
AMD Am79C900
Integrated Local Area Communications Controller
(ILACC
)
as well as the
Am79C9xx PCnet
family of chips, which are single-chip implementations of a
LANCE
chip and a DMA engine.
This includes a superset of the
PCI
bus Ethernet chips supported by the
pcn(4)
driver.
The
driver treats all of these
PCI
bus Ethernet chips as an
AMD Am79C970 PCnet-PCI
and does not support the additional features like the MII bus and burst mode of
AMD Am79C971 PCnet-FAST
and greater chips.
Thus the
pcn(4)
driver should be preferred for the latter.
Generally, the
driver aims at supporting as many different chips on as many different
platforms as possible,
partially at the cost of the best performance with some of these.
The
driver supports reception and transmission of extended frames for
vlan(4).
Selective reception of multicast Ethernet frames is provided by a 64-bit mask;
multicast destination addresses are hashed to a bit entry using the Ethernet
CRC function.
HARDWARE
C-Bus and ISA
The
driver supports
C-Bus
and
ISA
bus Ethernet adapters which are based on the following chips:
AMD Am7990 and Am79C90 LANCE
AMD Am79C960 PCnet-ISA
AMD Am79C961 PCnet-ISA+
AMD Am79C961A PCnet-ISA II
This includes support for the following Ethernet adapters:
C-Bus non-PnP:
Contec C-NET(98)S
ISA non-PnP:
BICC Isolan
Novell NE2100
ISA PnP:
AMD AM1500T/AM2100
AMD PCnet-32
AMD PCnet-ISA
Allied Telesyn AT-1500
Boca LANCard Combo
Cabletron E2100 Series DNI
Cabletron E2200 Single Chip
Melco Inc. LGY-IV
Novell NE2100
Racal InterLan EtherBlaster
The
driver does not support the selection of media types and options via
ifconfig(8)
with
C-Bus
and
ISA
bus Ethernet adapters.
PCI
The
PCI
bus Ethernet chips supported by the
driver are:
AMD Am53C974/Am79C970/Am79C974 PCnet-PCI
AMD Am79C970A PCnet-PCI II
AMD Am79C971 PCnet-FAST
AMD Am79C972 PCnet-FAST+
AMD Am79C973/Am79C975 PCnet-FAST III
AMD Am79C976 PCnet-PRO
AMD Am79C978 PCnet-Home
This includes support for the following Ethernet adapters:
AcerLAN NIC P20
Allied Telesyn AT-2450 and AT-2700 series
VMware emulated AMD Am79C970A PCnet-PCI II interface
The
driver supports the selection of the following media types via
ifconfig(8)
with
PCI
bus Ethernet adapters:
autoselect
Enable autoselection of the media type.
10baseT/UTP
Select UTP media.
10base5/AUI
Select AUI/BNC media.
The following media option is supported with these media types:
full-duplex
Select full duplex operation.
Note that unlike the
pcn(4)
driver, the
driver does not support selecting 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet) media types.
sparc64
The
driver supports the on-board
LANCE
interfaces found in
Sun Ultra 1
machines.
The
driver allows the selection of the following media types via
ifconfig(8)
with these on-board interfaces:
autoselect
Enable autoselection of the media type.
10baseT/UTP
Select UTP media.
10base5/AUI
Select AUI media.
When using autoselection, a default media type is selected for use by
examining all ports for carrier.
The first media type with which a carrier is detected will be selected.
Additionally, if carrier is dropped on a port, the driver will switch
between the possible ports until one with carrier is found.
The
driver also supports the following
Sun SBus
Ethernet add-on adapters:
SCSI HBA and Buffered Ethernet
(SBE/S, P/N 501-1869)
Fast SCSI and Buffered Ethernet
(FSBE/S, P/N 501-2015 and 501-2981)
The
driver does not support the selection of media types and options via
ifconfig(8)
with
SBus
Ethernet add-on adapters.
For further information on configuring media types and options, see
ifconfig(8).
DIAGNOSTICS
"le%d: overflow"
More packets came in from the Ethernet than there was space in the
LANCE
receive buffers.
Packets were missed.
"le%d: receive buffer error"
The
LANCE
ran out of buffer space, packet dropped.
"le%d: lost carrier"
The Ethernet carrier disappeared during an attempt to transmit.
The
LANCE
will finish transmitting the current packet,
but will not automatically retry transmission if there is a collision.
"le%d: excessive collisions, tdr %d"
The Ethernet was extremely busy or jammed,
outbound packets were dropped after 16 attempts to retransmit.
TDR
is the abbreviation of
Qq Time Domain Reflectometry .
The optionally reported TDR value is an internal counter of the interval
between the start of a transmission and the occurrence of a collision.
This value can be used to determine the distance from the Ethernet tap to
the point on the Ethernet cable that is shorted or open (unterminated).
"le%d: dropping chained buffer"
A packet did not fit into a single receive buffer and was dropped.
Since the
driver allocates buffers large enough to receive maximum sized Ethernet
packets, this means some other station on the LAN transmitted a packet
larger than allowed by the Ethernet standard.
"le%d: transmit buffer error"
The
LANCE
ran out of buffer space before finishing the transmission of a packet.
If this error occurs, the driver software has a bug.
"le%d: underflow"
The
LANCE
ran out of buffer space before finishing the transmission of a packet.
If this error occurs, the driver software has a bug.
"le%d: controller failed to initialize"
Driver failed to start the
LANCE
This is potentially a hardware failure.
"le%d: memory error"
RAM failed to respond within the timeout when the
LANCE
wanted to read or write it.
This is potentially a hardware failure.
"le%d: receiver disabled"
The receiver of the
LANCE
was turned off due to an error.
"le%d: transmitter disabled"
The transmitter of the
LANCE
was turned off due to an error.
