<!doctype linuxdoc system>
<!--
The SGML source of the Ethernet-Howto
=====================================
By Paul Gortmaker.
Modification Date: Oct 29, 2000
(Don't forget to update the reference to the current kernel version
in the Introduction section, and the date/version in the abstract!)
History:
o About July '93 - I was looking for info for e'net support for
a notebook, and was browsing the files on Donald's ftp site
(was ftp.super.org then) - Donald had a bunch of informational
files scattered about, and while talking to him, he mentioned
that someday it would be good if all that info was rolled
into one document. The Howto project was just started, with
the NET-Howto being the first howto, (grown from all the
confusion of the big net-switch at 0.99pl10). I rolled all
Donald's info into one, added a bunch of info that I had
gleaned from postings, copied the general style of the
NET-Howto, and the first Ethernet-Howto hit the internet
sometime in August 93.
o About December 93, Donald hacked together a HTML version of
the Ethernet-Howto, but it didn't get much distribution, and
I only kept the ASCII version up to date.
o Spring 94, and the Ethernet-Howto gets published in the
Linux Bible - 30 pages of a ~750 page book, published
by Linux System Labs.
o Donald moves jobs, and sets up a WWW home page with up-to-date
information on new linux drivers, and other ethernet news.
Look for the url contained in this document.
o A year (July 94) after its beginning, and the ugly tab+space
formatting is dead. The last ASCII version that was maintained
by hand was called version 1.03, and dated June 22/94. Any ASCII
versions newer than that were generated from this SGML source.
o I sat on the converted doc until Oct 94 because of a bug in the
cross-referencing with HTML. A fix was to be forthcoming, but
didn't eventuate. I eventually found a work-around.
o Nov 95 sees a major reorganization, which puts the FAQ section
and all the interesting bits first. People never read more
than the first few pages anyway... :-)
o Oct 96 and linux v2.0 seems to have finally stabilized at
patch-21. Good time for an update of this. Nuke some of
the older documentation of bugs pertaining to the v1.0
and v1.1 kernels.
o Feb 97 adds a few updates and fixes, taking it to 2.0.28
and 2.1.24 repectively.
o Nov 97 - pre-2.0.31 and 2.1.6x, update for new LSL book.
o Feb 98 - 2.0.33 and 2.1.84, more minor updates, more old
cruft nuked.
o July 98 - 2.0.34/2.1.108, as above, and add more focus
on using modules as all distributions do so now.
o Nov 98 - 2.0.35/2.1.126, significant updates, add driver
name to status line to help module users (not released)
o May 99 - 2.0.36/2.2.7, delete lots more old cruft, add new
section on SMP issues, remove references to v2.1 series.
o Oct 00 - 2.2.17/2.4.0-test series. Lots of e-mailed updates,
cesdis is no longer the main driver site.
TODO:
Change tags as required to move to DocBook format.
Perhaps phase out all/any non-linux related info to reduce the
size of this thing. (Perhaps better than phasing it out would be
to move it to a separate non-updated document?) I've started
by commenting out and deleting some such information.
XXX - Add section listing ways to get driver info from kernel.
-->
<article>
<title>Linux Ethernet-Howto
<author>by Paul Gortmaker
<date>v2.8, Oct 29, 2000
<abstract>
This is the Ethernet-Howto, which is a compilation of information
about which ethernet devices can be used for Linux, and how to
set them up. Note that this Howto is focused
on the hardware and low level driver aspect of the ethernet cards,
and does not cover the software end of things like <tt/ifconfig/
and <tt/route/. See the Network Howto for that stuff.
</abstract>
<toc>
<sect>Introduction<label id="main-intro">
<p>
The Ethernet-Howto covers what cards you should and
shouldn't buy; how to set
them up, how to run more than one, and other common problems and
questions. It contains detailed information on the current level
of support for all of the most common ethernet cards available.
It does <em/not/ cover the software end of things, as that
is covered in the NET-3 Howto. Also note that general non-Linux
specific questions about Ethernet are not (or at least they should
not be) answered here. For those types of questions, see the
excellent amount of information in the <em/comp.dcom.lans.ethernet/
FAQ. You can FTP it from <tt/rtfm.mit.edu</> just like all the other
newsgroup FAQs.
This present revision covers distribution kernels up to and
including 2.2.17.
The Ethernet-Howto is by:
<quote>
Paul Gortmaker, <tt/p_gortmaker@yahoo.com/
</quote>
The primary source of information for the initial
ASCII-only version of the Ethernet-Howto was:
<quote>
Donald J. Becker, <tt/becker@scyld.com/
</quote>
who we should thank for writing a lot of the ethernet
card drivers that are presently available for Linux. He also
is the author of the original NFS server too. Thanks Donald!
This document is Copyright (c) 1993-2000 by Paul Gortmaker.
Please see the Disclaimer and Copying information at the end
of this document (<ref id="copyright" name="copyright">)
for information about redistribution of
this document and the usual `we are not responsible for what
you manage to break...' type legal stuff.
<sect1>New Versions of this Document<label id="new-doc">
<p>
New versions of this document can be retrieved from:
<url url="http://metalab.unc.edu/mdw/HOWTO/Ethernet-HOWTO.html"
name="Ethernet-HOWTO">
or for those wishing to use FTP and/or get non-HTML formats:
<url url="ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/"
name="Sunsite HOWTO Archive">
This is the `official' location - it can also be found on
various Linux WWW/ftp mirror sites. Updates will be made
as new information and/or drivers becomes available. If this copy
that you are reading is more than 6 months old, then you should
check to see if an updated copy is available.
This document is available in various formats (postscript, dvi,
ASCII, HTML, etc.).
I would recommend viewing it in HTML (via a WWW browser) or the
Postscript/dvi format. Both of these contain cross-references
that are not included in the plain text ASCII format.
<sect1>Using the Ethernet-Howto<label id="using">
<p>
As this guide is getting bigger and bigger, you probably don't want
to spend the rest of your afternoon reading the whole thing. And
the good news is that you don't <em/have/ to read it all. The
HTML and Postscript/dvi versions have a table of contents which will
really help you find what you need a lot faster.
Chances are you are reading this document beacuse you can't get things
to work and you don't know what to do or check. The next section
(<ref id="help" name="HELP - It doesn't work!">)
is aimed at newcomers to linux and will point you in the
right direction.
Typically the same problems and questions are asked <em/over and over/
again by different people. Chances are your specific problem
or question is one of these Frequently Asked Questions, and
is answered in the FAQ portion of this document .
(<ref id="faq" name="The FAQ section">). Everybody should have a
look through this section before posting for help.
If you haven't got an ethernet card, then
you will want to start with deciding on a card.
(<ref id="what-card" name="What card should I buy...">)
If you have already got an ethernet card,
but are not sure if you can use it with Linux, then you will want to
read the section which contains specific information on each
manufacturer, and their cards.
(<ref id="card-intro" name="Vendor Specific...">)
If you are interested in some of the technical aspects
of the Linux device drivers, then you can have a browse of
the section with this type of information.
(<ref id="tech-intro" name="Technical Information">)
<sect1>HELP - It doesn't work!<label id="help">
<p>
Okay, don't panic. This will lead you through the process of
getting things working, even if you have no prior background
in linux or ethernet hardware.
First thing you need to do is figure out what model your card is
so you can determine if Linux has a driver for that particular
card. Different cards typically have different ways of being
controlled by the host computer, and the linux driver (if there
is one) contains this control information in a format that
allows linux to use the card.
If you don't have any manuals or anything of the sort that
tell you anything about the card model, then you can try
the section on helping with mystery cards
(reference section:
<ref id="mystery" name="Identifying an Unknown Card">).
Now that you know what type of card you have, read through
the details of your particular card in the card specific section
(reference section: <ref id="card-intro" name="Vendor Specific...">)
which lists in alphabetical order, card manufacturers,
individual model numbers and whether it has a linux driver or
not. If it lists it as `Not Supported' you can pretty much
give up here. If you can't find your card in that list, then
check to see if your card manual lists it as being `compatible'
with another known card type. For example there are hundreds,
if not thousands of different cards made to be compatible
with the original Novell NE2000 design.
Assuming you have found out that a linux driver exists for your
card, you now have to find it and make use of it.
Just because linux has a
driver for your card does <em/not/ mean that it is built
into every kernel. (The kernel is the core operating
system that is first loaded at boot, and contains drivers
for various pieces of hardware, among other things.)
Depending on who made the particular linux distribution
you are using, there may be only a few pre-built kernels, and
a whole bunch of drivers as smaller separate modules, or there may
be a whole lot of kernels, covering a vast combination of
built-in driver combinations.
Most linux distributions now ship with a bunch of
small modules that are the various drivers. The required
modules are typically loaded late in the boot process, or
on-demand as a driver is needed to access a particualr device.
You will need to attach this module to the kernel after it
has booted up. See the information that came with your
distribution on installing and using modules, along with
the module section in this document.
(<ref id="modules" name="Using the Ethernet Drivers as Modules">)
If you didn't find either a pre-built kernel with your driver,
or a module form of the driver, chances are you have a typically
uncommon card, and you will have to build your own kernel with
that driver included. Once you have linux installed, building a
custom kernel is not difficult at all. You essentially answer
yes or no to what you want the kernel to contain, and then tell
it to build it. There is a Kernel-HowTo that will help you along.
At this point you should have somehow managed to be booting a
kernel with your driver built in, or be loading it as a module.
About half of the problems people have are related to not having
driver loaded one way or another, so you may find things work now.
If it still doesn't work, then you need to verify that the
kernel is indeed detecting the card. To do this, you need
to type <tt>dmesg | more</tt> when logged in after the
system has booted and all modules have been loaded.
This will allow you to review the boot messages that the
kernel scrolled up the screen during the boot process.
If the card has been detected, you should see somewhere in
that list a message from your card's driver that starts with
<tt/eth0/, mentions the driver name and the hardware parameters
(interrupt setting, input/output port address, etc) that
the card is set for. (Note: At boot, linux lists
all the PCI cards installed in the system, regardless of
what drivers are available - do not mistake this for the
driver detection which comes later!)
If you don't see a driver indentification message like this,
then the driver didn't detect your card, and that is why things
aren't working. See the FAQ
(<ref id="faq" name="The FAQ Section">) for what to do if
your card is not detected. If you have a NE2000 compatible,
there is also some NE2000 specific tips on getting a card
detected in the FAQ section as well.
If the card is detected, but the detection message reports
some sort of error, like a resource conflict, then the driver
probably won't have initialized properly and the card still
wont be useable. Most common error messages of this sort are
also listed in the FAQ section, along with a solution.
If the detection message seems okay, then double check the
card resources reported by the driver against those that
the card is physically set for (either by little black jumpers on the
card, or by a software utility supplied by the card manufacturer.)
These must match exactly. For example, if you have the card
jumpered or configured to IRQ 15 and the driver reports IRQ 10
in the boot messages, things will not work. The FAQ section
discusses the most common cases of drivers incorrectly detecting
the configuration information of various cards.
At this point, you have managed to get you card detected with
all the correct parameters, and hopefully everything is working.
If not, then you either have a software configuration error,
or a hardware configuration error. A software configuration
error is not setting up the right network addresses for the
<tt/ifconfig/ and <tt/route/ commands, and details of how
to do that are fully described in the Network HowTo and the
`Network Administrator's Guide' which both probably came on
the CD-ROM you installed from.
A hardware configuration error is when some sort of resource
conflict or mis-configuration (that the driver didn't detect
at boot) stops the card from working properly. This typically
can be observed in several different ways. (1) You get
an error message when <tt/ifconfig/ tries to open the device
for use, such as ``SIOCSFFLAGS: Try again''. (2) The driver
reports <tt/eth0/ error messages (viewed by <tt>dmesg | more</tt>)
or strange inconsistencies for each time it tries to send or
receive data. (3) Typing <tt>cat /proc/net/dev</tt> shows
non-zero numbers in one of the errs, drop, fifo, frame or
carrier columns for <tt/eth0/. (4) Typing
<tt>cat /proc/interrupts</tt> shows a zero interrupt count
for the card.
Most of the typical hardware configuration errors are also
discussed in the FAQ section.
Well, if you have got to this point and things still
aren't working, read the FAQ section
of this document, read the vendor specific section detailing
your particular card, <em/and if it still doesn't work/ then
you may have to resort to posting to an appropriate
newsgroup for help. If you do post, please detail all
relevant information in that post, such as the card brand,
the kernel version, the driver boot messages, the output
from <tt>cat /proc/net/dev</tt>, a clear description of
the problem, and of course what you
have already tried to do in an effort to get things to work.
You would be surprised at how many people post useless things
like ``Can someone help me? My ethernet doesn't work.'' and
nothing else.
Readers of the newsgroups tend to ignore such silly posts,
whereas a detailed and informational problem description
may allow a `linux-guru' to spot your problem right away.
Of course the same holds true when e-mailing a problem
report - always provide as much information as possible.
<!--
XXX - nobody cares about 100VG except those that already have it. Delete
this soon, or cut it down into a FAQ.
<sect1>100VG versus 100BaseT
<p>
100BaseT is much more prominent than 100VG, and the
following blurb from an older one of Donald's informative
<tt/comp.os.linux/ postings summarizes the situation quite well:
``For those not in the know, there are two competing 100Mbs ethernet
standards, 100VG (aka 100baseVG and 100VG-AnyLAN) and 100baseT (with
100baseTx, 100baseT4 and 100baseFx cable types).
100VG was on the market first, and I feel that it is better
engineered than 100baseTx. I was rooting for it to win, but it
clearly isn't going to. HP et al. made several bad choices:
1) Delaying the standard so that they could accommodate IBM and
support token ring frames. It `seemed like a good idea at the
time', since it would enable token ring shops to upgrade without
the managers having to admit they made a very expensive mistake
committing to the wrong technology. But there was nothing to be
gained, as the two frame types couldn't coexist on a network, token
ring is a morass of complexity, and IBM went with 100baseT anyway.
2) Producing only ISA and EISA cards. (A PCI model was only recently
announced.) The ISA bus is too slow for 100mbs, and relatively few
EISA machines exist. At the time VLB was common, fast, and cheap
with PCI a viable choice. But "old-timer" wisdom held that servers
would stay with the more expensive EISA bus.
3) Not sending me a databook. Yes, this action was the real reason for
the 100VGs downfall :-). I called all over for programming info, and
all I could get was a few page color glossy brochure from AT&T
describing how wonderful the Regatta chipset was.''
-->
<sect1>Type of cable that your card should support<label id="cable-intro">
<p>
The twisted pair cables, with the RJ-45 (giant phone jack)
connectors is technically called 10BaseT. You may also
hear it called UTP (Unsheilded Twisted Pair).
The thinnet, or thin ethernet cabling, (RG-58 coaxial cable)
with the BNC (metal push and turn-to-lock) connectors is
technically called 10Base2.
The older thick ethernet (10mm coaxial cable) which is only
found in older installations is called 10Base5. The 15 pin
D-shaped plug found on some ethernet cards (the AUI connector)
is used to connect to thick ethernet and external transcievers.
Most ethercards also come in a `Combo' version for only
$10-$20 more.
These have both twisted pair and thinnet transceiver built-in,
allowing you to change your mind later.
Most installations will use 10BaseT/100BaseT
10Base2 does not offer any upgrade path to 100Base-whatever.
10Base2 is fine for hobbyists setting up a home network
when purchasing a hub is not desireable for some reason
or another.
See <ref id="cable" name="Cables, Coax...">
for other concerns with different types of ethernet cable.
<sect>Frequently Asked Questions<label id="faq">
<p>
Here are some of the more frequently asked questions about using
Linux with an Ethernet connection. Some of the more specific
questions are sorted on a `per manufacturer basis'.
Chances are the question you want an answer for has already
been asked (and answered!) by someone else, so even if you
don't find your answer here, you probably can find what you
want from a news archive such as
<url url="http://www.dejanews.com" name="Dejanews">.
<sect1>What card should I buy for Linux?<label id="what-card">
<p>
The answer to this question depends heavily on exactly what
you intend on doing with your net connection, and how much
traffic it will see.
If you only expect a single user to be doing the occasional
ftp session or WWW connection, then even an old 8 bit ISA card
will probably keep you happy.
If you intend to set up a server, and you require the CPU
overhead of moving data over the network to be kept
to a minimum, you probably want to look at one of the
PCI cards that uses a chip with bus-mastering capapbility,
such as the DEC tulip (21xxx) chip, or the AMD PCnet-PCI chip.
If you fall somewhere in the middle of the above, then any
one of the low cost PCI or 16 bit ISA cards with stable
drivers will do the job for you.
<sect1>Alpha Drivers -- Getting and Using them<label id="alfa">
<p>
I heard that there is an updated or preliminary/alpha driver
available for my card. Where can I get it?
The newest of the `new' drivers can be found on Donald's
ftp site: <tt/www.scyld.com/ in the
<tt>/pub/linux/</tt> area. Things
change here quite frequently, so just look around for it.
Alternatively, it may be easier to use a WWW browser on:
<url url="http://www.scyld.com/linux/"
name="Don's Linux Home Page">
to locate the driver that you are looking for. (Watch out for
WWW browsers that silently munge the source by replacing
TABs with spaces and so on - use ftp, or at least an FTP URL
for downloading if unsure.)
Now, if it really is an alpha, or pre-alpha driver, then please
treat it as such. In other words, don't complain because you
can't figure out what to do with it. If you can't figure out
how to install it, then you probably shouldn't be testing it.
Also, if it brings your machine down, don't complain. Instead,
send us a well documented bug report, or even better, a patch!
Note that some of the `useable' experimental/alpha drivers have
been included in the standard kernel source tree. When running
<tt/make config/ one of the first things you will be asked
is whether to ``Prompt for development and/or incomplete
code/drivers''. You will have to answer `Y' here to get
asked about including any alpha/experiemntal drivers.
<sect1>Using More than one Ethernet Card per Machine<label id="two-card">
<p>
What needs to be done so that Linux can run two ethernet cards?
The answer to this question depends on whether the driver(s)
is/are being used as a loadable module or are compiled directly
into the kernel. Most linux distributions use modular drivers now.
This saves distributing lots of kernels, each with a different driver
set built in. Instead a single basic kernel is used and the
individual drivers that are need for a particular user's system are
loaded once the system has booted far enough to access
the driver module files (usually stored in <tt>/lib/modules/</tt>).
<em/With the Driver as a Module:/
In the case of
PCI drivers, the module will typically detect all of the
installed cards of that brand model automatically. However,
for ISA cards, probing for a card is not a safe operation, and
hence you typically need to supply the I/O base address of the
card so the module knows where to look. This information is
stored in the file <tt>/etc/conf.modules</tt>.
As an example, consider a user that has two ISA NE2000 cards,
one at <tt/0x300/ and one at <tt/0x240/ and what lines they
would have in their <tt>/etc/conf.modules</tt> file:
<verb>
alias eth0 ne
alias eth1 ne
options ne io=0x240,0x300
</verb>
What this does: This says that if the administrator (or the
kernel) does a <tt/modprobe eth0/ or a <tt/modprobe eth1/ then
the <tt/ne.o/ driver should be loaded for either <tt/eth0/ or
<tt/eth1/. Furthermore, when the <tt/ne.o/ module is loaded, it
should be loaded with the options <tt/io=0x240,0x300/ so that the
driver knows where to look for the cards. Note that the <tt/0x/
is important - things like <tt/300h/ as commonly used in the DOS
world won't work. Switching the order of the <tt/0x240/ and
the <tt/0x300/ will switch which physical card ends up as
<tt/eth0/ and <tt/eth1/.
Most of the ISA module drivers can take multiple comma separated
I/O values like this example to handle multiple cards. However,
some (older?) drivers, such as the 3c501.o module are currently
only able to handle
one card per module load. In this case you can load the module
twice to get both cards detected. The <tt>/etc/conf.modules</tt>
file in this case would look like:
<verb>
alias eth0 3c501
alias eth1 3c501
options eth0 -o 3c501-0 io=0x280 irq=5
options eth1 -o 3c501-1 io=0x300 irq=7
</verb>
In this example the <tt/-o/ option has been used to give each
instance of the module a unique name, since you can't have two
modules loaded with the same name. The <tt/irq=/ option has
also been used to to specify the hardware IRQ setting of the card.
(This method can also be used with modules that accept comma
separated I/O values, but it is less efficient since the module
ends up being loaded twice when it doesn't really need to be.)
As a final example, consider a user with one 3c503 card
at <tt/0x350/ and one SMC Elite16 (wd8013) card at <tt/0x280/.
They would have:
<verb>
alias eth0 wd
alias eth1 3c503
options wd io=0x280
options 3c503 io=0x350
</verb>
For PCI cards, you typically only need the <tt/alias/ lines to
correlate the <tt/ethN/ interfaces with the appropriate driver
name, since the I/O base of a PCI card can be safely detected.
The available modules are typically stored in
<tt>/lib/modules/`uname -r`/net</tt> where the
<tt/uname -r/ command gives the kernel version (e.g. 2.0.34).
You can look in there to see which one matches your card.
Once you have the correct settings in your <tt/conf.modules/
file, you can test things out with:
<verb>
modprobe ethN
dmesg | tail
</verb>
where `N' is the number of the ethernet interface you are testing.
<em/With the Driver Compiled into the Kernel:/
If you have the driver compiled into the kernel, then
the hooks for multiple ethercards are all there.
However, note that at the moment only <em/one/ ethercard is
auto-probed for by default. This helps to avoid possible
boot time hangs caused by probing sensitive cards.
(Note: As of late 2.1.x kernels, the boot probes have been
sorted into safe and unsafe, so that all safe (e.g. PCI and
EISA) probes will find all related cards automatically. Systems
with more than one ethernet card with at least one of them
being an ISA card will still need to do one of the following.)
There are two ways that you can enable auto-probing for
the second (and third, and...) card. The easiest
method is to pass boot-time arguments to the kernel,
which is usually done by LILO. Probing for the
second card can be achieved by using a boot-time argument
as simple as <tt/ether=0,0,eth1/. In this
case <tt/eth0/ and <tt/eth1/ will be assigned in the order
that the cards are found at boot. Say if you want
the card at <tt/0x300/ to be <tt/eth0/ and
the card at <tt/0x280/ to be <tt/eth1/ then you could use
<tscreen>
LILO: linux ether=5,0x300,eth0 ether=15,0x280,eth1
</tscreen>
The <tt/ether=/ command accepts more than the IRQ + I/O
+ name shown above. Please have a look at
<ref id="lilo" name="Passing Ethernet Arguments...">
for the full syntax, card specific parameters, and LILO tips.
These boot time arguments can be made permanent so that you
don't have to re-enter them every time. See the LILO
configuration option `<tt/append/' in the LILO manual.
The second way (not recommended) is to edit the file
<tt/Space.c/ and replace the <tt/0xffe0/ entry for the
I/O address with a zero. The <tt/0xffe0/ entry tells it
not to probe for that device -- replacing it with a zero
will enable autoprobing for that device.
<sect1>The <tt/ether=/ thing didn't do anything for me. Why?
<p>
As described above, the <tt/ether=/ command <em/only/ works
for drivers that are compiled into the kernel. Now most
distributions use the drivers in a modular form, and so
the <tt/ether=/ command is rarely used anymore. (Some older
documentation has yet to be updated to reflect this change.)
If you want to apply options for a modular ethernet driver
you <em/must/ make changes to the <tt>/etc/conf.modules</tt>
file.
If you <em/are/ using a compiled in driver, and have added
an <tt/ether=/ to your LILO configuration file, note
that it won't take effect until you re-run <tt/lilo/
to process the updated configuration file.
<sect1>Problems with NE1000 / NE2000 cards (and clones)<label id="ne2k-probs">
<p>
<bf/Problem:/
PCI NE2000 clone card is not detected at boot with v2.0.x.
<bf/Reason:/
The <tt/ne.c/ driver up to v2.0.30 only knows about the PCI
ID number of RealTek 8029 based clone cards. Since then,
several others have also released PCI NE2000 clone
cards, with different PCI ID numbers, and hence the
driver doesn't detect them.
<bf/Solution:/
The easiest solution is to upgrade to a v2.0.31 (or newer)
version of the
linux kernel. It knows the ID numbers of about five different
NE2000-PCI chips, and will detect them automatically at boot or
at module loading time. If you upgrade to 2.0.34 (or newer)
there is a PCI-only specific NE2000 driver that is slightly
smaller and more efficient than the original ISA/PCI driver.
<bf/Problem:/
PCI NE2000 clone card is reported as an ne1000 (8 bit card!)
at boot or when I load the ne.o module for v2.0.x, and hence
doesn't work.
<bf/Reason:/
Some PCI clones don't implement byte wide access (and hence are
not truly 100% NE2000 compatible). This causes the probe
to think they are NE1000 cards.
<bf/Solution:/
You need to upgrade to v2.0.31 (or newer) as described above.
The driver(s) now check for this hardware bug.
<bf/Problem:/
PCI NE2000 card gets terrible performance, even when reducing the
window size as described in the Performance Tips section.
<bf/Reason:/
The spec sheets for the original 8390 chip, desgined and sold
over ten years ago, noted that a dummy read from the chip was
required before each write operation for maximum reliablity.
The driver has the facility to do this but it has been disabled
by default since the v1.2 kernel days. One user has reported that
re-enabling this `mis-feature' helped their performance with a
cheap PCI NE2000 clone card.
<bf/Solution:/
Since it has only been reported as a solution by one person, don't
get your hopes up. Re-enabling the read before write fix is done
by simply editing the driver file in <tt>linux/drivers/net/</tt>,
uncommenting the line containing <tt/NE_RW_BUGFIX/ and then
rebuilding the kernel or module as appropriate. Please send an
e-mail describing the performance difference and type of card/chip
you have if this helps you. (The same can be done for the
<tt/ne2k-pci.c/ driver as well).
<bf/Problem:/
The <tt/ne2k-pci.c/ driver reports error messages like
<tt/timeout waiting for Tx RDC/ with a PCI NE2000 card and doesn't
work right.
<bf/Reason:/
Your card and/or the card to PCI bus link can't handle the long
word I/O optimization used in this driver.
<bf/Solution:/
Firstly, check the settings available in the BIOS/CMOS setup
to see if any related to PCI bus timing are too aggressive for
reliable operation. Otherwise using the ISA/PCI <tt/ne.c/
driver (or removing the <tt/#define USE_LONGIO/ from
<tt/ne2k-pci.c/) should let you use the card.
<bf/Probem:/
ISA Plug and Play NE2000 (such as RealTek 8019) is not detected.
<bf/Reason:/
The original NE2000 specification (and hence the linux NE2000 driver)
does not have support for Plug and Play.
<bf/Solution:/
Use the DOS configuration disk that came with the card to disable
PnP, and to set the card to a specified I/O address and IRQ. Add
a line to <tt>/etc/conf.modules</tt> like <tt/options ne io=0xNNN/
where <tt/0xNNN/ is the hex I/O address you set the card to. (This
assumes you are using a modular driver; if not then use an
<tt/ether=0,0xNNN,eth0/ argument at boot). You may also have to
enter the BIOS/CMOS setup and mark the IRQ as Legacy-ISA instead of
PnP. Alternatively, if you
need to leave PnP enabled for compatibility with some other operating
system, then look into the <em/isapnptools/ package. Try
<tt/man isapnp/ to see if it is already installed on your system.
If not, then have a look at the following URL:
<url url="http://www.roestock.demon.co.uk/isapnptools/"
name="ISA PNP Tools">
<bf/Problem:/
NE*000 driver reports `not found (no reset ack)' during boot
probe.
<bf/Reason:/
This is related to the above change. After the initial
verification that an 8390 is at the probed I/O address, the
reset is performed. When the card has completed the reset,
it is supposed to acknowedge that the reset has completed.
Your card doesn't, and so the driver assumes that no NE card
is present.
<bf/Solution:/
You can tell the driver that you have a bad card by using
an otherwise unused <tt/mem_end/ hexidecimal value of <tt/0xbad/ at
boot time. You <em/have/ to also supply a non-zero I/O base
for the card when using the <tt/0xbad/ override. For example,
a card that is at <tt/0x340/ that doesn't ack the reset
would use something like:
<tscreen>
LILO: linux ether=0,0x340,0,0xbad,eth0
</tscreen>
This will allow the card detection to continue, even if your
card doesn't ACK the reset. If you are using the driver as
a module, then you can supply the option <tt/bad=0xbad/ just
like you supply the I/O address.
<bf/Problem:/
NE*000 card hangs machine at first network access.
<bf/Reason:/
This problem has been reported for kernels as old as 1.1.57
to the present. It appears confined to a few software configurable
clone cards. It appears that they expect to be initialized in
some special way.
<bf/Solution:/
Several people have reported that running the supplied DOS
software config program and/or the supplied DOS driver prior
to warm booting (i.e. loadlin or the `three-finger-salute')
into linux allowed the card to work. This would indicate
that these cards need to be initialized in a particular
fashion, slightly different than what the present Linux
driver does.
<bf/Problem:/
NE*000 ethercard at <tt/0x360/ doesn't get detected.
<bf/Reason:/
Your NE2000 card is <tt/0x20/ wide in
I/O space, which makes it hit the parallel port at <tt/0x378/.
Other devices that could be there are the second floppy
controller (if equipped) at <tt/0x370/ and the secondary
IDE controller at <tt/0x376--0x377/.
If the port(s) are already registered by another driver, the
kernel will not let the probe happen.
<bf/Solution:/
Either move your card to an address like <tt/0x280, 0x340, 0x320/
or compile without parallel printer support.
<bf/Problem:/
Network `goes away' every time I print something (NE2000)
<bf/Reason:/
Same problem as above, but you have an older kernel that
doesn't check for overlapping I/O regions. Use the
same fix as above, and get a new kernel while you are at it.
<bf/Problem:/
NE*000 ethercard probe at 0xNNN: 00 00 C5 ... not found.
(invalid signature yy zz)
<bf/Reason:/
First off, do you have a NE1000 or NE2000 card at the addr. 0xNNN?
And if so, does the hardware address reported look like a valid
one? If so, then you have a poor NE*000 clone. All NE*000 clones
are supposed to have the value <tt/0x57/ in bytes 14 and 15 of the
SA PROM on the card. Yours doesn't -- it has `yy zz' instead.
<bf/Solution:/
There are two ways to get around this. The easiest is to
use an <tt/0xbad/ mem_end value as described above for the
`no reset ack' problem. This will bypass the signature check,
as long as a non-zero I/O base is also given. This way no
recompilation of the kernel is required.
The second method (for hackers) involves changing the driver
itself, and then recompiling your kernel (or module).
The driver (/usr/src/linux/drivers/net/ne.c) has a "Hall of Shame"
list at about line 42. This list is used to detect poor clones.
For example, the DFI cards use `DFI' in the first 3 bytes of the
PROM, instead of using <tt/0x57/ in bytes 14 and 15, like they are
supposed to.
<bf/Problem:/
The machine hangs during boot right after the `8390...' or
`WD....' message. Removing the NE2000 fixes the problem.
<bf/Solution:/
Change your NE2000 base address to something like <tt/0x340/.
Alternatively, you
can use the ``reserve='' boot argument in conjunction with
the ``ether='' argument to protect the card from other
device driver probes.
<bf/Reason:/
Your NE2000 clone isn't a good enough clone. An active
NE2000 is a bottomless pit that will trap any driver
autoprobing in its space.
Changing the NE2000 to a less-popular
address will move it out of the way of other autoprobes,
allowing your machine to boot.
<bf/Problem:/
The machine hangs during the SCSI probe at boot.
<bf/Reason:/
It's the same problem as above, change the
ethercard's address, or use the reserve/ether boot arguments.
<bf/Problem:/
The machine hangs during the soundcard probe at boot.
<bf/Reason:/
No, that's really during the silent SCSI probe, and it's
the same problem as above.
<bf/Problem:/
NE2000 not detected at boot - no boot messages at all
<bf/Solution:/
There is no `magic solution' as there can be a number of
reasons why it wasn't detected. The following list should
help you walk through the possible problems.
1) Build a new kernel with only the device drivers that you need.
Verify that you are indeed booting the fresh kernel. Forgetting to
run lilo, etc. can result in booting the old one. (Look closely at
the build time/date reported at boot.) Sounds obvious, but we have
all done it before. Make sure the driver is in fact included in
the new kernel, by checking the <tt/System.map/ file for names
like <tt/ne_probe/.
2) Look at the boot messages carefully. Does it ever even mention
doing a ne2k probe such
as `NE*000 probe at 0xNNN: not found (blah blah)'
or does it just fail silently. There is a big difference.
Use <tt>dmesg|more</tt>
to review the boot messages after logging in, or hit Shift-PgUp
to scroll the screen up after the boot has completed and the login
prompt appears.
3) After booting, do a <tt>cat /proc/ioports</tt> and verify
that the full iospace that the card will require is vacant. If
you are at <tt/0x300/ then the ne2k driver will ask
for <tt/0x300-0x31f/. If any other device driver has registered
even one port anywhere in that range, the probe will not
take place at that address and will silently continue to the next
of the probed addresses. A common case is having the lp driver
reserve <tt/0x378/ or the second IDE channel reserve <tt/0x376/
which stops the ne driver from probing <tt/0x360-0x380/.
4) Same as above for <tt>cat /proc/interrupts</tt>. Make sure no
other device has registered the interrupt that you set
the ethercard for. In this case, the probe will happen, and the
ether driver will complain loudly at boot about not being able to
get the desired IRQ line.
5) If you are still stumped by the silent failure of the driver, then
edit it and add some printk() to the probe. For example, with the ne2k
you could add/remove lines (marked with a `+' or `-') in
<tt>linux/drivers/net/ne.c</tt> like:
<code>
int reg0 = inb_p(ioaddr);
+ printk("NE2k probe - now checking %x\n",ioaddr);
- if (reg0 == 0xFF)
+ if (reg0 == 0xFF) {
+ printk("NE2k probe - got 0xFF (vacant I/O port)\n");
return ENODEV;
+ }
</code>
Then it will output messages for each port address that it checks,
and you will see if your card's address is being probed or not.
6) You can also get the ne2k diagnostic from Don's ftp site (mentioned
in the howto as well) and see if it is able to detect your card after
you have booted into linux. Use the `<tt/-p 0xNNN/' option to tell it
where to look for the card. (The default is <tt/0x300/ and it doesn't
go looking elsewhere, unlike the boot-time probe.)
The output from when it finds a card will look something like:
<code>
Checking the ethercard at 0x300.
Register 0x0d (0x30d) is 00
Passed initial NE2000 probe, value 00.
8390 registers: 0a 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 01 00 30 01 00 00 00 00
SA PROM 0: 00 00 00 00 c0 c0 b0 b0 05 05 65 65 05 05 20 20
SA PROM 0x10: 00 00 07 07 0d 0d 01 01 14 14 02 02 57 57 57 57
NE2000 found at 0x300, using start page 0x40 and end page 0x80.
</code>
Your register values and PROM values will probably be different.
Note that all the PROM values are doubled for a 16 bit card, and
that the ethernet address (00:00:c0:b0:05:65) appears in the
first row, and the double <tt/0x57/ signature appears at the
end of the PROM.
The output from when there is no card installed at <tt/0x300/
will look something like this:
<code>
Checking the ethercard at 0x300.
Register 0x0d (0x30d) is ff
Failed initial NE2000 probe, value ff.
8390 registers: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
SA PROM 0: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
SA PROM 0x10: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
Invalid signature found, wordlength 2.
</code>
The <tt/0xff/ values arise because that is the value that
is returned when one reads a vacant I/O port. If you happen
to have some other hardware in the region that is probed, you
may see some non <tt/0xff/ values as well.
7) Try warm booting into linux from a DOS boot floppy (via loadlin)
after running the supplied DOS driver or config program. It may be doing
some extra (i.e. non-standard) "magic" to initialize the card.
8) Try Russ Nelson's ne2000.com packet driver to see if even it can
see your card -- if not, then things do not look good. Example:
<tscreen>
A:> ne2000 0x60 10 0x300
</tscreen>
The arguments are software interrupt vector, hardware IRQ,
and I/O base. You can get it from any msdos archive in
pktdrv11.zip -- The current version may be newer than 11.
<sect1>Problems with SMC Ultra/EtherEZ and WD80*3 cards<label id="8013-probs">
<p>
<bf/Problem:/
You get messages such as the following:
<verb>
eth0: bogus packet size: 65531, status=0xff, nxpg=0xff
</verb>
<bf/Reason:/
There is a shared memory problem.
<bf/Solution:/
The most common reason for this is PCI machines that are
not configured to map in ISA memory devices. Hence you
end up reading the PC's RAM (all <tt/0xff/ values) instead of
the RAM on the card that contains the data from the
received packet.
Other typical problems that are easy to fix are board conflicts,
having cache or `shadow ROM' enabled for that region, or
running your ISA bus faster than 8Mhz. There are also a
surprising number of memory failures on ethernet cards,
so run a diagnostic program if you have one for your
ethercard.
<bf/Problem:/
SMC EtherEZ doesn't work in non-shared memory (PIO) mode.
<bf/Reason:/
Older versions of the Ultra driver only supported the card
in the shared memory mode of operation.
<bf/Solution:/
The driver in kernel version 2.0 and above also supports the
programmed I/O mode of operation. Upgrade to v2.0 or newer.
<bf/Problem:/
Old wd8003 and/or jumper-settable wd8013 always get the IRQ wrong.
<bf/Reason:/
The old wd8003 cards and jumper-settable wd8013 clones don't
have the EEPROM that the driver can read the IRQ setting from.
If the driver can't read the IRQ, then it tries to auto-IRQ
to find out what it is. And if auto-IRQ returns zero, then
the driver just assigns IRQ 5 for an 8 bit card or IRQ 10 for
a 16 bit card.
<bf/Solution:/
Avoid the auto-IRQ code, and tell the kernel what the IRQ
that you have jumpered the card to in your module configuration
file (or via a boot time argument for in-kernel drivers).
<bf/Problem:/
SMC Ultra card is detected as wd8013, but the IRQ and shared
memory base is wrong.
<bf/Reason:/
The Ultra card looks a lot like a wd8013, and if the Ultra
driver is not present in the kernel, the wd driver may
mistake the ultra as a wd8013. The ultra probe comes before the
wd probe, so this usually shouldn't happen. The ultra stores
the IRQ and mem base in the EEPROM differently than a wd8013,
hence the bogus values reported.
<bf/Solution:/
Recompile with only the drivers you need in the kernel. If you
have a mix of wd and ultra cards in one machine, and are using
modules, then load the ultra module first.
<sect1>Problems with 3Com cards<label id="3com-probs">
<p>
<bf/Problem:/
The 3c503 picks IRQ N, but this is needed for some
other device which needs IRQ N. (eg. CD ROM driver, modem, etc.)
Can this be fixed without compiling this into the kernel?
<bf/Solution:/
The 3c503 driver probes for a free IRQ line in the order
{5, 9/2, 3, 4}, and it should pick a line which isn't being
used. The driver chooses when
the card is <tt/ifconfig/'ed into operation.
If you are using a modular driver, you can use module
parameters to set various things, including the IRQ value.
The following selects IRQ9, base
location <tt/0x300/, <ignored value>, and if_port #1 (the
external transceiver).
<tscreen>
io=0x300 irq=9 xcvr=1
</tscreen>
Alternately, if the driver is compiled into the kernel,
you can set the same values at boot by passing
parameters via LILO.
<tscreen>
LILO: linux ether=9,0x300,0,1,eth0
</tscreen>
The following selects IRQ3, probes for the base location,
<ignored value>, and the default if_port #0 (the internal
transceiver)
<tscreen>
LILO: linux ether=3,0,0,0,eth0
</tscreen>
<bf/Problem:/
3c503: configured interrupt X invalid, will use autoIRQ.
<bf/Reason:/
The 3c503 card can only use one of IRQ{5, 2/9, 3, 4}
(These are the only lines that are connected to the card.)
If you pass in an IRQ value that is not in the above
set, you will get the above message.
Usually, specifying an interrupt value for the 3c503 is
not necessary. The 3c503 will autoIRQ when it gets
ifconfig'ed, and pick one of IRQ{5, 2/9, 3, 4}.
<bf/Solution:/
Use one of the valid IRQs listed above, or enable
autoIRQ by not specifying the IRQ line at all.
<bf/Problem:/
The supplied 3c503 drivers don't use the AUI (thicknet) port.
How does one choose it over the default thinnet port?
<bf/Solution:/
The 3c503 AUI port can be selected at boot-time for in-kernel
drivers, and at module insertion for modular drivers.
The selection is overloaded onto the low bit of
the currently-unused dev->rmem_start variable, so a boot-time
parameter of:
<tscreen>
LILO: linux ether=0,0,0,1,eth0
</tscreen>
should work for in-kernel drivers.
To specify the AUI port when loading as a module, just append
<tt/xcvr=1/ to the module options line along with
your I/O and IRQ values.
<sect1>FAQs Not Specific to Any Card.
<p>
<sect2>Linux and ISA Plug and Play Ethernet Cards
<p>
For best results (and minimum aggravation) it is recommended
that you use the (usually DOS) program that came with your
card to disable the PnP mechanism and set it to a fixed
I/O address and IRQ. Make sure the I/O address you use is
probed by the driver at boot, or if using modules then supply
the address as an <tt/io=/ option in <tt>/etc/conf.modules</tt>.
You may also have to enter the BIOS/CMOS setup and mark the IRQ
as Legacy-ISA instead of PnP (if your computer has this option).
Note that you typically don't need DOS installed to run a
DOS based configuration program. You can usually just boot
a DOS floppy disk and run them from the supplied floppy disk.
You can also download OpenDOS and FreeDOS for free.
If you require PnP enabled for compatibility with some other
operating system then you will have to use the isapnptools
package with linux to configure the card(s) each time at boot.
You will still have to make sure the I/O address chosen for the
card is probed by the driver or supplied as an <tt/io=/ option.
Some systems have an `enable PnP OS' (or similar named)
option in the BIOS/CMOS setup menu which will need to
be disabled in nearly all cases or the cards won't
work properly, or even be detected . Best described by one
user who said `I don't know what it does behind the scenes,
but it seems to be evil.'
<sect2>Ethercard is Not Detected at Boot.
<p>
The usual reason for this is that people are using a kernel
that does not have support for their particular card built
in. For a modular kernel, it usually means that the required
module has not been requested for loading, or that an I/O
address needs to be specified as a module option.
If you are using a modular based kernel, such as those installed
by most of the linux distributions, then try and use the
configuration utility for the distribution to select the module
for your card. For ISA cards, it is a good idea to determine
the I/O address of the card and add it as an
option (e.g. <tt/io=0x340/) if the configuration utility asks
for any options. If there is no configuration utility, then
you will have to add the correct module name (and options)
to <tt>/etc/conf.modules</tt> -- see <tt/man modprobe/ for
more details.
If you are using a pre-compiled kernel that is part of
a distribution set, then check the documentation to see which
kernel you installed, and if it was built with support
for your particular card. If it wasn't, then your
options are to try and get one that has support
for your card, or build your own.
It is usually wise to build your own kernel with only
the drivers you need, as this cuts down on the kernel
size (saving your precious RAM for applications!) and
reduces the number of device probes that can upset
sensitive hardware. Building a kernel is not as complicated
as it sounds. You just have to answer yes or no to
a bunch of questions about what drivers you want, and
it does the rest.
The next main cause is having another device using part
of the I/O space that your card needs. Most cards are
16 or 32 bytes wide in I/O space. If your card is set
at <tt/0x300/ and 32 bytes wide, then the driver will ask
for <tt/0x300-0x31f/. If any other device driver has registered
even one port anywhere in that range, the probe will not
take place at that address and the driver will silently
continue to the next of the probed addresses. So, after
booting, do a <tt>cat /proc/ioports</tt> and verify that the
full I/O space that the card will require is vacant.
Another problem is having your card jumpered to an I/O
address that isn't probed by default. The list of
probed addresses for each driver is easily found just
after the text comments in the driver source.
Even if the I/O setting of your card is
not in the list of probed addresses, you can supply
it at boot (for in-kernel drivers) with
the <tt/ether=/ command as described in
<ref id="lilo" name="Passing Ethernet Arguments...">
Modular drivers can make use of the <tt/io=/ option
in <tt>/etc/conf.modules</tt> to
specify an address that isn't probed by default.
<sect2><tt/ifconfig/ reports the wrong I/O address for the card.
<p>
No it doesn't. You are just interpreting it incorrectly.
This is <em/not/ a bug, and the numbers reported are correct. It just
happens that some 8390 based cards (wd80x3, smc-ultra, etc) have the
actual 8390 chip living at an offset from the first assigned I/O port.
This is the value stored in
<tt/dev->base_addr/, and is what <tt/ifconfig/ reports. If you
want to see the full range of ports that your card uses, then try
<tt>cat /proc/ioports</tt> which will give the numbers you expect.
<sect2>PCI machine detects card but driver fails probe.
<p>
Some PCI BIOSes may not enable all PCI cards at power-up,
especially if the BIOS option `PNP OS' is enabled. This
mis-feature is to support the current release of Windows which
still uses some real-mode drivers. Either disable this option,
or try and upgrade to a newer driver which has the code to
enable a disabled card.
<sect2>Shared Memory ISA cards in PCI Machine do not work (<tt/0xffff/)
<p>
This will usually show up as reads of lots of <tt/0xffff/ values.
No shared memory cards of any type will work in a PCI machine
unless you have the PCI ROM BIOS/CMOS SETUP configuration set
properly. You have to set it to allow shared memory access
from the ISA bus for the memory region that your card is trying
to use. If you can't figure out which settings are applicable
then ask your supplier or local computer guru. For AMI BIOS,
there is usually a "Plug and Play" section where there will
be an ``ISA Shared Memory Size'' and ``ISA Shared Memory Base''
settings. For cards like the wd8013 and SMC Ultra, change the
size from the default of `Disabled' to 16kB, and change the base
to the shared memory address of your card.
<sect2>Card seems to send data but never receives anything.
<p>
Do a <tt>cat /proc/interrupts</tt>.
A running total of the number of interrupt events your
card generates will be in the list given from the above.
If it is zero and/or doesn't increase when you try to use
the card then there is probably a physical interrupt
conflict with another device installed in the computer
(regardless of whether or not the other device has a
driver installed/available).
Change the IRQ of one of the two devices to a free IRQ.
<sect2>Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) Support
<p>
Werner Almesberger has been working on ATM support
for linux.
He has been working with the Efficient Networks ENI155p
board (<url url="http://www.efficient.com/"
name="Efficient Networks">)
and the Zeitnet ZN1221 board
(<url url="http://www.zeitnet.com/" name="Zeitnet">).
Werner says that the driver for the ENI155p is rather
stable, while the driver for the ZN1221 is presently
unfinished.
Check the latest/updated status at the following URL:
<url url="http://lrcwww.epfl.ch/linux-atm/"
name="Linux ATM Support">
<sect2>Gigabyte Ethernet Support
<p>
Is there any gigabyte ethernet support for Linux?
Yes, there are currently at least two.
A driver for the Packet Engines G-NIC PCI Gigabit Ethernet adapter
is available in the v2.0 and v2.2 kernels
For more details, support, and driver updates, see:
<tt>http://www.scyld.com/linux/drivers/yellowfin.html</tt>
The <tt/acenic.c/ driver available in the v2.2 kernels
can be used for the Alteon AceNIC Gigabit Ethernet card
and other Tigon based cards such as the 3Com 3c985.
The driver should also work on the NetGear GA620, however
this has yet to be verified.
<sect2>FDDI Support
<p>
Is there FDDI support for Linux?
Yes. Larry Stefani has written
a driver for v2.0 with Digital's DEFEA (FDDI EISA)
and DEFPA (FDDI PCI) cards.
This was included into the v2.0.24 kernel. Currently
no other cards are supported though.
<sect2>Full Duplex Support
<p>
Will Full Duplex give me 20MBps? Does Linux support it?
Cameron Spitzer writes the following about full duplex 10Base-T
cards: ``If you connect it to a full duplex switched hub,
and your system is fast enough and not doing much else, it can
keep the link busy in both directions.
There is no such thing as full duplex 10BASE-2 or 10BASE-5
(thin and thick coax).
Full Duplex works by disabling collision detection in the adapter.
That's why you can't do it with coax; the LAN won't run that way.
10BASE-T (RJ45 interface) uses separate wires for send and receive,
so it's possible to run both ways at the same time. The switching
hub takes care of the collision problem. The signalling rate
is 10 Mbps.''
So as you can see, you still will only be able to receive or
transmit at 10Mbps, and hence don't expect a 2x performance
increase. As to whether it is supported or not, that depends
on the card and possibly the driver. Some cards may do
auto-negotiation, some may need driver support, and some may
need the user to select an option in a card's EEPROM configuration.
Only the serious/heavy user would notice the difference between
the two modes anyway.
<sect2>Ethernet Cards for Linux on SMP Machines
<p>
If you spent the extra money on a multi processor (MP) computer then
buy a good ethernet card as well. For v2.0 kernels it wasn't really
an issue, but it definitely is for v2.2. Most of the older
non-intelligent (e.g. ISA bus PIO and shared memory design) cards
were never designed with any consideration for use on a MP machine.
The executive summary is to buy an intelligent modern design
card and make sure the driver has been written (or updated) to
handle MP operation. (The key words here are `modern design' - the
PCI-NE2000's are just a 10+ year old design on a modern bus.)
Looking for the text <tt/spin_lock/ in the driver source is a good
indication that the driver has been written to deal with MP operation.
The full details of why you should buy a good card for MP use (and
what happens if you dont) follow.
In v2.0 kernels, only one processor was allowed `in kernel'
(i.e. changing kernel data and/or running device drivers) at any
given time. So from the point of view of the card (and the associated
driver) nothing was different from uni processor (UP) operation and
things just continued to work. (This was the easiest way to get a
working MP version of Linux - one big lock around the whole kernel
only allows one processor in at a time. This way you know that you
won't have two processors trying to change the same thing at the
same time!)
The downside to only allowing one processor in
the kernel at a time was that you only got MP performance
if the running programs were self contained and calculation intensive.
If the programs did a lot of input/output (I/O) such as reading or
writing data to disk or over a network, then all but one of the
processors would be stalled waiting on their I/O requests to be
completed while the one processor running in kernel frantically
tries to run all the device drivers to fill the I/O requests. The
kernel becomes the bottleneck and since there is only one processor
running in the kernel, the performance of a MP machine in the heavy
I/O, single-lock case quickly degrades close to that of a single
processor machine.
Since this is clearly less than ideal (esp. for file/WWW servers,
routers, etc.) the v2.2 kernels have finer grained locking - meaning
that more than one processor can be in the kernel at a time. Instead
of one big lock around the whole kernel, there are a lot of smaller
locks protecting critical data from being manipulated by more than
one processor at a time - e.g. one processor can be running the
driver for the network card, while another processor
is running the driver for the disk drive at the same time.
Okay, with that all in mind here are the snags: The finer locking
means that you can have one processor trying to send data
out through an ethernet driver while another processor tries to
access the same driver/card to do something else (such as get the
card statistics for <tt>cat /proc/net/dev</tt>). Oops - your card
stats just got sent out over the wire, while you got data for
your stats instead. Yes, the card got confused by being asked
to do two (or more!) things at once, and chances are it crashed
your machine in the process.
So, the driver that worked for UP is
no longer good enough - it needs to be updated with locks that
control access to the underlying card so that the three tasks of
receive, transmit and manipulation
of configuration data are serialized to
the degree required by the card for stable operation. The scary
part here is that a driver not yet updated with locks for stable
MP operation will probably appear to be working in a MP machine
under light network load, but will crash the machine or at least
exhibit strange behaviour when two (or more!) processors try to
do more than one of these three tasks at the same time.
The updated MP aware ethernet driver will (at a
minimum) require a lock
around the driver that limits access at the entry points
from the kernel into the driver to `one at a time please'.
With this in place, things will be serialized so that the
underlying hardware should be treated just as if it was being
used in a UP machine, and so it should be stable. The downside
is that the one lock around the whole ethernet driver has
the same negative performance implications that having one big
lock around the whole kernel had (but on a smaller scale) - i.e.
you can only have one processor dealing with the card
at a time.
[Technical Note: The performance impact may also include
increased interrupt latencies if the locks that need to be
added are of the <tt/irqsave/ type and they are held
for a long time.&rsqb
Possible improvements on this situation can be made in two
ways. You can try to minimize the time between when the lock is
taken and when it is released, and/or you can implement finer
grained locking within the driver (e.g. a lock around the whole
driver would be overkill if a lock or two protecting against
simultaneous access to a couple of sensitive registers/settings
on the card would suffice).
However, for older non-intelligent
cards that were never designed with MP use in mind, neither of
these improvements may be feasible. Worse yet is that the
non-intelligent cards typically require the processor to move
the data between the card and the computer memory, so in a
worst case scenario the lock will be held the whole time that
it takes to move each 1.5kB data packet over an ISA bus.
The more modern intelligent cards typically move network data
directly to and from the computer memory without any help from
a processor. This is a big win, since the lock is then only
held for the short time it takes the processor to tell the card
where in memory to get/store the next network data packet. More
modern card designs are less apt to require a single big
lock around the whole driver as well.
<sect2>Ethernet Cards for Linux on Alpha/AXP PCI Boards
<p>
As of v2.0, only the 3c509, depca, de4x5, pcnet32, and all the
8390 drivers (wd, smc-ultra, ne, 3c503, etc.) have
been made `architecture independent' so as to work on the
DEC Alpha CPU based systems. Other updated PCI drivers from
Donald's WWW page may also work as these have been written
with architecture independence in mind.
Note that the changes that are required to make a driver
architecture independent aren't that complicated.
You only need to do the following:
-multiply all <tt/jiffies/ related values by HZ/100 to account
for the different HZ value that the Alpha uses.
(i.e <tt/timeout=2;/ becomes <tt>timeout=2*HZ/100;</tt>)
-replace any I/O memory (640k to 1MB) pointer dereferences with
the appropriate readb() writeb() readl() writel() calls, as
shown in this example.
<code>
- int *mem_base = (int *)dev->mem_start;
- mem_base[0] = 0xba5eba5e;
+ unsigned long mem_base = dev->mem_start;
+ writel(0xba5eba5e, mem_base);
</code>
-replace all memcpy() calls that have I/O memory as source or
target destinations with the appropriate one of
<tt/memcpy_fromio()/ or <tt/memcpy_toio()/.
Details on handling memory accesses in an architecture
independent fashion are documented in the file
<tt>linux/Documentation/IO-mapping.txt</tt> that comes
with recent kernels.
<sect2>Ethernet for Linux on SUN/Sparc Hardware.
<p>
For the most up to date information on Sparc stuff, try the
following URL:
<url url="http://www.geog.ubc.ca/sparc" name="Linux Sparc">
Note that some Sparc ethernet hardware gets its MAC address
from the host computer, and hence you can end up with multiple
interfaces all with the same MAC address. If you need to
put more than one interface on the same net then use the
<tt/hw/ option to <tt/ifconfig/ to assign unique MAC address.
Issues regarding porting PCI drivers to the Sparc platform
are similar to those mentioned above for the AXP platform.
In addition there may be some endian issues, as the Sparc
is big endian, and the AXP and ix86 are little endian.
<sect2>Ethernet for Linux on Other Hardware.
<p>
There are several other hardware platforms that Linux can
run on, such as Atari/Amiga (m68k). As in the Sparc case
it is best to check with the home site of each Linux
port to that platform to see what is currently supported.
(Links to such sites are welcome here - send them in!)
<sect2>Linking 10 or 100 BaseT without a Hub
<p>
Can I link 10/100BaseT (RJ45) based systems together without a hub?
You can link 2 machines easily, but no more than that, without
extra devices/gizmos. See <ref id="utp" name="Twisted Pair">
-- it explains
how to do it. And no, you can't hack together a hub just by
crossing a few wires and stuff. It's pretty much impossible
to do the collision signal right without duplicating a hub.
<sect2>SIOCSIFxxx: No such device
<p>
I get a bunch of `SIOCSIFxxx: No such device' messages at
boot, followed by a `SIOCADDRT: Network is unreachable'
What is wrong?
Your ethernet device was not detected at boot/module insertion
time, and when
<tt/ifconfig/ and <tt/route/ are run, they have no device
to work with. Use <tt>dmesg | more</tt> to review the
boot messages and see if there are any messages about
detecting an ethernet card.
<sect2>SIOCSFFLAGS: Try again
<p>
I get `SIOCSFFLAGS: Try again' when I run `ifconfig' -- Huh?
Some other device has taken the IRQ that your ethercard
is trying to use, and so the ethercard can't use the IRQ.
You don't necessairly need to reboot to resolve this, as
some devices only grab the IRQs when they need them and
then release them when they are done. Examples are some
sound cards, serial ports, floppy disk driver, etc. You
can type <tt>cat /proc/interrupts</tt> to see which interrupts
are presently <em/in use/. Most of the
Linux ethercard drivers only grab the IRQ when they are
opened for use via `ifconfig'. If you can get the other
device to `let go' of the required IRQ line, then you
should be able to `Try again' with ifconfig.
<sect2>Using `ifconfig' and Link UNSPEC with HW-addr of 00:00:00:00:00:00
<p>
When I run ifconfig with no arguments, it reports that
LINK is UNSPEC (instead of 10Mbs Ethernet) and it
also says that my hardware address is all zeros.
This is because people are running a newer version of
the `ifconfig' program than their kernel version. This
new version of ifconfig is not able to report these properties
when used in conjunction with an older kernel. You can either
upgrade your kernel, `downgrade' ifconfig, or simply ignore
it. The kernel knows your hardware address, so it really
doesn't matter if ifconfig can't read it.
You may also get strange information if the <tt/ifconfig/
program you are using is a lot older than the kernel you are
using.
<sect2>Huge Number of RX and TX Errors
<p>
When I run ifconfig with no arguments, it reports that I
have a huge error count in both rec'd and transmitted
packets. It all seems to work ok -- What is wrong?
Look again. It says <tt/RX packets/ <em/big number/ <bf/PAUSE/
<tt/errors 0/ <bf/PAUSE/ <tt/dropped 0/ <bf/PAUSE/ <tt/overrun 0/.
And the same for the <tt/TX/ column.
Hence the big numbers you are seeing are the total number of
packets that your machine has rec'd and transmitted.
If you still find it confusing, try typing
<tt>cat /proc/net/dev</tt> instead.
<sect2>Entries in <tt>/dev/</tt> for Ethercards
<p>
I have /dev/eth0 as a link to /dev/xxx. Is this right?
Contrary to what you have heard, the files in /dev/* are not used.
You can delete any <tt>/dev/wd0, /dev/ne0</tt> and similar entries.
<sect2>Linux and ``trailers''
<p>
Should I disable trailers when I `ifconfig' my ethercard?
You can't disable trailers, and you shouldn't want
to. `Trailers' are a hack to avoid data copying in the
networking layers. The idea was to use a trivial
fixed-size header of size `H', put the variable-size header
info at the end of the packet, and allocate all
packets `H' bytes before the start of a page. While it was a
good idea, it turned out to not work well in practice.
If someone suggests the use of `-trailers', note that it
is the equivalent of sacrificial goats blood. It won't do
anything to solve the problem, but if problem fixes itself then
someone can claim deep magical knowledge.
<sect2>Access to the raw Ethernet Device
<p>
How do I get access to the raw ethernet device in linux,
without going through TCP/IP and friends?
<code>
int s=socket(AF_INET,SOCK_PACKET,htons(ETH_P_ALL));
</code>
This gives you a socket receiving every protocol type.
Do <tt/recvfrom()/ calls to it and it will fill the sockaddr
with device type in sa_family and the device name in the
sa_data array. I don't know who originally invented
SOCK_PACKET for Linux (its been in for ages) but its superb stuff.
You can use it to send stuff raw too via <tt/sendto()/ calls.
You have to have root access to do either of course.
<sect>Performance Tips<label id="perf">
<p>
Here are some tips that you can use if you are suffering
from low ethernet throughput, or to gain a bit more
speed on those ftp transfers.
The <tt/ttcp.c/ program is a good test for measuring
raw throughput speed. Another common trick is to do
a <tt>ftp> get large_file /dev/null</tt> where
<tt/large_file/ is > 1MB and residing in the buffer
cache on the Tx'ing machine. (Do the `get' at least
twice, as the first time will be priming the buffer
cache on the Tx'ing machine.) You want the file in
the buffer cache because you are not interested in
combining the file access speed from the disk into
your measurement. Which is also why you send the
incoming data to <tt>/dev/null</tt> instead of onto
the disk.
<sect1>General Concepts
<p>
Even an 8 bit card is able to receive back-to-back packets
without any problems. The difficulty arises when the computer
doesn't get the Rx'd packets off the card quick enough to
make room for more incoming packets. If the computer does not
quickly clear the card's memory of the packets already received,
the card will have no place to put the new packet.
In this case
the card either drops the new packet, or writes over top of
a previously received packet. Either one seriously interrupts
the smooth flow of traffic by causing/requesting re-transmissions
and can seriously degrade performance by up to a factor of 5!
Cards with more onboard memory are able to ``buffer'' more
packets, and thus can handle larger bursts of
back-to-back packets without dropping packets.
This in turn means that the card does not require as low
a latency from the the host computer with respect to pulling
the packets out of the buffer to avoid dropping packets.
Most 8 bit cards have an 8kB buffer, and most 16 bit cards have
a 16kB buffer. Most Linux drivers will reserve 3kB of that
buffer (for two Tx buffers), leaving only 5kB of
receive space for an 8 bit card. This is room enough for
only three full sized (1500 bytes) ethernet packets.
<sect1>ISA Cards and ISA Bus Speed
<p>
As mentioned above, if the packets are removed from the card
fast enough, then a drop/overrun condition won't occur even
when the amount of Rx packet buffer memory is small. The
factor that sets the rate at which packets are removed from
the card to the computer's memory is the speed of the data path
that joins the two -- that being the ISA bus speed. (If the
CPU is a dog-slow 386sx-16, then this will also play a role.)
The recommended ISA bus clock is about 8MHz, but many
motherboards and peripheral devices can be run at higher
frequencies. The clock frequency for the ISA bus can usually
be set in the CMOS setup, by selecting a divisor of the
mainboard/CPU clock frequency. Some ISA and PCI/ISA
mainboards may not have this option, and so you are stuck
with the factory default.
For example, here are some receive speeds as measured by
the TTCP program on a 40MHz 486, with an 8 bit WD8003EP
card, for different ISA bus speeds.
<code>
ISA Bus Speed (MHz) Rx TTCP (kB/s)
------------------- --------------
6.7 740
13.4 970
20.0 1030
26.7 1075
</code>
You would be hard pressed to do better than 1075kB/s with
<em/any/ 10Mb/s ethernet card, using TCP/IP. However, don't expect
every system to work at fast ISA bus speeds. Most systems will
not function properly at speeds above 13MHz. (Also, some
PCI systems have the ISA bus speed fixed at 8MHz, so that
the end user does not have the option of increasing it.)
In addition to faster transfer speeds, one will usually also
benefit from a reduction in CPU usage due to the shorter
duration memory and I/O cycles. (Note that hard disks and
video cards located on the ISA bus will also usually experience
a performance increase from an increased ISA bus speed.)
Be sure to back up your data prior to experimenting with
ISA bus speeds in excess of 8MHz, and thouroughly test
that all ISA peripherals are operating properly after
making any speed increases.
<sect1>Setting the TCP Rx Window
<p>
Once again, cards with small amounts of onboard RAM and
relatively slow data paths between the card and the computer's
memory run into trouble. The default TCP Rx
window setting is 32kB, which means that a fast computer on
the same subnet as you can dump 32k of data on you without
stopping to see if you received any of it okay.
Recent versions of the <tt/route/ command have the ability
to set the size of this window on the fly. Usually it is only
for the local net that this window must be reduced, as computers
that are behind a couple of routers or gateways are `buffered'
enough to not pose a problem. An example usage would be:
<code>
route add <whatever> ... window <win_size>
</code>
where <tt/win_size/ is the size of the window you wish to
use (in bytes). An 8 bit 3c503 card on an ISA bus operating
at a speed of 8MHz or less would work well with a window
size of about 4kB. Too large a window will cause overruns
and dropped packets, and a drastic reduction in ethernet
throughput. You can check the operating status by doing
a <tt>cat /proc/net/dev</tt> which will display any
dropped or overrun conditions that occurred.
<sect1>Increasing NFS performance
<p>
Some people have found that using 8 bit
cards in NFS clients causes poorer than expected performance,
when using 8kB (native Sun) NFS packet size.
The possible reason for this could be due to the difference
in on board buffer size between the 8 bit and the 16 bit cards.
The maximum ethernet packet size is about 1500 bytes. Now that
8kB NFS packet will arrive as about 6 back to back maximum size
ethernet packets. Both the 8 and 16 bit cards have no problem
Rx'ing back to back packets. The problem arises when the machine
doesn't remove the packets from the cards buffer in time, and the
buffer overflows. The fact that 8 bit cards take an extra ISA
bus cycle per transfer doesn't help either. What you <em/can/ do
if you have an 8 bit card is either set the NFS transfer
size to 2kB (or even 1kB), or try increasing the ISA bus speed
in order to get the card's buffer cleared out faster.
I have found that an old WD8003E card at 8MHz (with no other
system load) can keep up with a large receive at 2kB NFS size,
but not at 4kB, where performance was degraded by a factor of three.
On the other hand, if the default mount option is to use 1kB
size and you have at least a 16 bit ISA card, you may find
a significant increase in going to 4kB (or even 8kB).
<sect>Vendor/Manufacturer/Model Specific Information<label id="card-intro">
<p>
The following lists many cards in alphabetical order by vendor
name and then product identifier. Beside each product ID, you
will see either `Supported', `Semi-Supported' or `Not Supported'.
Supported means that a driver for that card exists, and many
people are happily using it and it seems quite reliable.
Semi-Supported means that a driver exists, but at least one
of the following descriptions is true:
(1) The driver and/or hardware are buggy, which may cause poor
performance, failing connections or even crashes.
(2) The driver is new or the card is fairly uncommon,
and hence the driver has
seen very little use/testing and the driver author has had
very little feedback. Obviously (2) is preferable to (1), and
the individual description of the card/driver should make it
clear which one holds true. In either case, you will probably have
to answer `Y' when asked ``Prompt for development and/or
incomplete code/drivers?'' when running <tt/make config/.
Not Supported means there is not a driver currently available
for that card. This could be due to a lack of interest in
hardware that is rare/uncommon, or because the vendors won't
release the hardware documentation required to write a driver.
Note that the difference between `Supported' and `Semi-Supported'
is rather subjective, and is based on user feedback observed
in newsgroup postings and mailing list messages. (After all, it
is impossible for one person to test all drivers with all cards
for each kernel version!!!) So be warned that you may find
a card listed as semi-supported works perfectly for you (which
is great), or that a card listed as supported gives you no end
of troubles and problems (which is not so great).
After the status, the name of the driver given in the linux kernel
is listed. This will also be the name of the driver module that
would be used in the <tt/alias eth0 driver_name/ line that is
found in the <tt>/etc/conf.modules</tt> module configuration file.
<sect1>3Com<label id="3com">
<p>
If you are not sure what your card is, but you think it is a
3Com card, you can probably figure it out from the assembly
number. 3Com has a document `Identifying 3Com Adapters By
Assembly Number' (ref 24500002) that would most likely clear
things up. See
<ref id="3com-tech" name="Technical Information from 3Com">
for info on how to get documents from 3Com.
Also note that 3Com has a WWW/FTP site with various goodies:
<tt/www.3Com.com/ that you may want to check out. They
even have linux drivers for some of their cards there you
may wish to test out. It has been reported that their
drivers are not stable and/or unuseable on SMP and non
ix86 based machines, so you may want to keep that in mind.
<sect2>3c501<label id="3c501">
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: 3c501
This obsolete stone-age 8 bit card is really
too brain-damaged to use. Avoid it like the plague. Do not
purchase this card, even as a joke. It's performance
is horrible, and it breaks in many ways.
For those not yet convinced, the 3c501 can only do one
thing at a time -- while you are removing one packet
from the single-packet buffer it cannot receive
another packet, nor can it receive a packet while
loading a transmit packet. This was fine for a
network between two 8088-based computers where
processing each packet and replying took 10's of
msecs, but modern networks send back-to-back
packets for almost every transaction.
AutoIRQ works, DMA isn't used, the autoprobe only
looks at <tt/0x280/ and <tt/0x300/, and the debug level is set
with the third boot-time argument.
Once again, the use of a 3c501 is <em/strongly discouraged/!
Even more so with a IP multicast kernel, as you will
grind to a halt while listening to <em/all/ multicast
packets. See the comments at the top of the source code
for more details.
<sect2>EtherLink II, 3c503, 3c503/16<label id="3c503">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c503 (+8390)
The 3c503 does not have ``EEPROM setup'',
so a diagnostic/setup program
isn't needed before running the card with Linux. The
shared memory address of the 3c503 is set using jumpers
that are shared with the boot PROM address. This is
confusing to people familiar with other ISA cards,
where you always leave the jumper set to ``disable''
unless you have a boot PROM.
These cards should be about the same speed as the same bus
width WD80x3, but turn out to be actually a bit slower.
These shared-memory ethercards also have a
programmed I/O mode that doesn't use the 8390
facilities (their engineers found too many bugs!)
The Linux 3c503 driver can also work with the 3c503
in programmed-I/O mode, but this is slower and less
reliable than shared memory mode. Also, programmed-I/O
mode is not as well tested when updating the drivers.
You shouldn't use the programmed-I/O mode
unless you need it for MS-DOS compatibility.
The 3c503's IRQ line is set in software, with no hints
from an EEPROM. Unlike the MS-DOS drivers, the
Linux driver has capability to autoIRQ: it uses the
first available IRQ line in {5,2/9,3,4}, selected each
time the card is ifconfig'ed. (Older driver versions
selected the IRQ at boot time.) The ioctl() call
in `ifconfig' will return EAGAIN if no IRQ line is
available at that time.
Some common problems that people have with the 503
are discussed in <ref id="3com-probs" name="Problems with...">.
If you intend on using this driver as a loadable module
you should probably see
<ref id="modules" name="Using the Ethernet Drivers as Modules">
for module specific information.
Note that some old diskless 386 workstations have an on board
3c503 (made by 3Com and sold under different names, like `Bull')
but the vendor ID is not a 3Com ID and so it won't be detected.
More details can be found in the Etherboot package, which you
will need anyways to boot these diskless boxes.
<sect2>Etherlink Plus 3c505<label id="3c505">
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: 3c505
These cards use the i82586 chip but are not that many of them about.
It is included in the standard kernel, but it is classed as
an alpha driver. See <ref id="alfa" name="Alpha Drivers">
for important information on using alpha-test ethernet drivers
with Linux.
There is also the file
<tt>/usr/src/linux/drivers/net/README.3c505</tt>
that you should read if you are going to use one of these cards.
It contains various options that you can enable/disable.
<sect2>Etherlink-16 3c507<label id="3c507">
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: 3c507
This card uses one of the Intel chips, and the
development of the driver is closely related to
the development of the Intel Ether Express driver.
The driver is included in the standard kernel
release, but as an alpha driver.
See <ref id="alfa" name="Alpha Drivers"> for important
information on using alpha-test ethernet drivers
with Linux.
<sect2>Etherlink III, 3c509 / 3c509B<label id="3c509">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c509
This card is fairly inexpensive and has
good performance for an ISA non-bus-master design.
The drawbacks are that the original 3c509
requires very low interrupt latency. The 3c509B
shouldn't suffer from the same problem, due to
having a larger buffer. (See below.) These cards
use PIO transfers, similar to a ne2000 card, and so
a shared memory card such as a wd8013 will be more
efficient in comparison.
The original 3c509 has a small packet buffer
(4kB total, 2kB Rx, 2kB Tx), causing the driver to
occasionally drop a packet if interrupts are masked for
too long. To minimize this problem, you can try unmasking
interrupts during IDE disk transfers (see <tt/man hdparm/) and/or
increasing your ISA bus speed so IDE transfers finish sooner.
The newer model 3c509B has 8kB on board, and the buffer
can be split 4/4, 5/3 or 6/2 for Rx/Tx. This setting
is changed with the DOS configuration utility, and is stored
on the EEPROM. This should alleviate the
above problem with the original 3c509.
3c509B users should use either the supplied DOS
utility to disable the <em/plug and play/ support, <em/and/
to set the output media to what they require. The linux
driver currently does <em/not/ support the Autodetect
media setting, so you <em/have/ to select 10Base-T or
10Base-2 or AUI.
Note that to turn off PnP entirely, you should do a
<tt>3C5X9CFG /PNP:DISABLE</tt> and then follow that with a hard
reset to ensure that it takes effect.
Some people ask about the ``Server or Workstation'' and ``Highest
Modem Speed'' settings presented in the DOS configuration utility.
Donald writes ``These are only hints to the drivers, and the Linux
driver does not use these parameters: it always optimizes for high
throughput rather than low latency (`Server'). Low latency was
critically important for old, non-windowed, IPX throughput.
To reduce the latency the MS-DOS driver for the 3c509 disables
interrupts for some operations, blocking serial port interrupts.
Thus the need for the `modem speed' setting. The Linux driver avoids
the need to disable interrupts for long periods by operating only
on whole packets e.g. by not starting to transmit a packet
until it is completely transferred to the card.''
Note that the ISA card detection uses a different method
than most cards. Basically, you ask the cards to respond
by sending data to an ID_PORT (port <tt/0x100/ to <tt/0x1ff/
on intervals of <tt/0x10/).
This detection method means that
a particular card will <em/always/ get detected first
in a multiple ISA 3c509 configuration.
The card with the lowest hardware ethernet address
will <em/always/ end up being <tt/eth0/. This shouldn't matter
to anyone, except for those people who want to assign
a 6 byte hardware address to a particular interface.
If you have multiple 3c509 cards, it is best to append
<tt/ether=0,0,ethN/ commands without the I/O port specified
(i.e. use I/O=zero) and allow the probe to sort out which
card is first. Using a non-zero I/O value will ensure that it
does not detect all your cards, so don't do it.
If this really bothers you, have a look at Donald's latest driver,
as you may be able to use a <tt/0x3c509/ value in the unused mem
address fields to order the detection to suit your needs.
<sect2>3c515<label id="cork">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c515
This is 3Com's ISA 100Mbps offering,
codenamed ``CorkScrew''. A relatively new driver from
Donald for these cards is included in the v2.2 kernels.
For the most up to date information, you
should probably look on the Vortex page:
<url url="http://www.scyld.com/linux/drivers/vortex.html"
name="Vortex">
<sect2>3c523<label id="3c523">
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: 3c523
This MCA bus card uses the i82586, and Chris Beauregard
has modified the ni52 driver to work with these cards. The
driver for it can be found in the v2.2 kernel source tree.
More details can be found on the
MCA-Linux page at
<tt>http://glycerine.cetmm.uni.edu/mca/</tt>
<sect2>3c527<label id="3c527">
<p>
Status: Not Supported.
Yes, another MCA card. No, not too much interest in it.
Better chances with the 3c529 if you are stuck with MCA.
<sect2>3c529<label id="3c529">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c509
This card actually uses the same chipset as the 3c509.
Donald actually put hooks into the 3c509 driver to check
for MCA cards after probing for EISA cards, and before
probing for ISA cards, long before MCA support was
added to the kernel. The required MCA probe code is
included in the driver shipped with v2.2 kernels.
More details can be found on the MCA-Linux page at:
<tt>http://glycerine.cetmm.uni.edu/mca/</tt>
<sect2>3c562
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c589 (distributed separately)
This PCMCIA card is the combination of a 3c589B ethernet card
with a modem. The modem appears as a standard modem to the
end user. The only difficulty is getting the two separate
linux drivers to share one interrupt. There are a couple of new
registers and some hardware interrupt sharing support.
You need to use a v2.0 or newer kernel that has the support
for interrupt sharing.
<!--
XXX Product discontinued so this can go soon...
As a side note, the modem part of the card has been reported
to be not well documented for the end user (the manual just
says `supports the AT command set') and it may not connect
as well as other name brand modems. The recommendation is to
buy a 3c589B instead, and then get a PCMCIA modem card from
a company that specializes in modems.
-->
Thanks again to Cameron for getting a sample unit and
documentation sent off to David Hinds. Look for support in David's
PCMCIA package release.
See <ref id="pcmcia" name="PCMCIA Support"> for more
info on PCMCIA chipsets, socket enablers, etc.
<sect2>3c575
<p>
Status: Unknown.
A driver for this PCMCIA card is under development and hopefully
will be included in David's PCMCIA package in the future.
Best to check the PCMCIA package to get the current status.
<sect2>3c579<label id="3c579">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c509
The EISA version of the 509. The current EISA version
uses the same 16 bit wide chip rather than a 32 bit
interface, so the performance increase isn't stunning.
Make sure the card is configured for EISA addressing mode.
Read the above 3c509 section for info on the driver.
<sect2>3c589 / 3c589B<label id="3c589">
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: 3c589
Many people have been using this PCMCIA card for quite some time
now. Note that support for it is not (at present) included
in the default kernel source tree.
The "B" in the name means the same here as it does for
the 3c509 case.
There are drivers available on Donald's ftp site and in
David Hinds PCMCIA package. You will also need
a supported PCMCIA controller chipset.
See <ref id="pcmcia" name="PCMCIA Support"> for more
info on PCMCIA drivers, chipsets, socket enablers, etc.
<sect2>3c590 / 3c595<label id="vortex">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c59x
These ``Vortex'' cards are for PCI bus machines, with the '590
being 10Mbps and the '595 being 3Com's 100Mbs offering.
Also note that you can run the '595 as a '590 (i.e. in a 10Mbps mode).
The driver is included in the v2.0 kernel source, but is
also continually being updated. If you have problems with the
driver in the v2.0 kernel, you
can get an updated driver from the following URL:
<url url="http://www.scyld.com/linux/drivers/vortex.html"
name="Vortex">
Note that there are two different 3c590 cards out there, early
models that had 32kB of on-board memory, and later models that
only have 8kB of memory. Chances are you won't be
able to buy a new 3c59x for much longer, as it is being replaced
with the 3c90x card. If you are buying a used one off somebody,
try and get the 32kB version. The 3c595 cards have 64kB,
as you can't get away with only 8kB RAM at 100Mbps!
A thanks to Cameron Spitzer and Terry Murphy of 3Com for
sending cards and documentation to Donald so he could write
the driver.
<sect2>3c592 / 3c597
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c59x
These are the EISA versions of the 3c59x
series of cards. The 3c592/3c597 (aka Demon) should work with
the vortex driver discussed above.
<sect2>3c900 / 3c905 / 3c905B / 3c905C
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c59x
These cards (aka `Boomerang', aka EtherLink III XL) have been
released to take over the place of the 3c590/3c595 cards.
The support for the Cyclone `B' revision was only recently added.
To use this card with older v2.0 kernels, you must obtain the
updated <tt/3c59x.c/ driver from Donald's site at:
<url url="http://www.scyld.com/network"
name="Vortex-Page">
<sect2>3c985
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: acenic
This driver, by Jes Sorensen, is available in v2.2 kernels
It supports several other Gigabit cards in addition to
the 3Com model.
<sect1>Accton<label id="accton">
<p>
<sect2>Accton MPX
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne (+8390)
Don't let the name fool you. This is still supposed to be a
NE2000 compatible card, and should work with the ne2000 driver.
<sect2>Accton EN1203, EN1207, EtherDuo-PCI
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de4x5, tulip, OR rtl8139
Apparently there have been several revisions of the
EN1207 (A through D) with A, B, and C being tulip based
and the D revision being RealTek 8139 based (different driver).
So as with all purchases, you should try and make sure
you can return it if it doesn't work for you.
<sect2>Accton EN2209 Parallel Port Adaptor (EtherPocket)
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: ?
A driver for these parallel port adapters is available
but not yet part of the 2.0 or 2.1 kernel source. You have to
get the driver from:
<tt>http://www.unix-ag.uni-siegen.de/~nils/accton_linux.html</tt>
<sect2>Accton EN2212 PCMCIA Card
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: ?
David Hinds has been working on a driver for this card, and
you are best to check the latest release of his PCMCIA
package to see what the present status is.
<sect1>Allied Telesyn/Telesis<label id="allied-telesis">
<p>
<sect2>AT1500<label id="at-1500">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: lance
These are a series of low-cost ethercards using the 79C960 version
of the AMD LANCE. These are bus-master cards, and hence one of
the faster ISA bus ethercards available.
DMA selection and chip numbering information can be found in
<ref id="lance" name="AMD LANCE">.
More technical information on AMD LANCE based Ethernet cards
can be found in <ref id="amd-notes" name="Notes on AMD...">.
<sect2>AT1700<label id="at1700">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: at1700
Note that to access this driver during <tt/make config/
you still have to answer `Y' when asked ``Prompt for
development and/or incomplete code/drivers?'' at
the first. This is simply due to lack of feedback on the
driver stability due to it being a relatively rare card.
If you have problems with the driver that ships with
the kernel then you may be interested in the alternative
driver available at:
<tt>http://www.cc.hit-u.ac.jp/nagoya/at1700/</tt>
The Allied Telesis AT1700 series ethercards are based
on the Fujitsu MB86965. This chip uses a programmed
I/O interface, and a pair of fixed-size transmit
buffers. This allows small groups of packets to
be sent back-to-back, with a short pause while
switching buffers.
A unique feature is the ability to drive 150ohm STP
(Shielded Twisted Pair) cable commonly installed for
Token Ring, in addition to 10baseT 100ohm UTP
(unshielded twisted pair). A fibre optic
version of the card (AT1700FT) exists as well.
The Fujitsu chip used on the AT1700 has a design flaw:
it can only be fully reset by doing a power cycle of the machine.
Pressing the reset button doesn't reset the bus interface. This
wouldn't be so bad, except that it can only be reliably detected
when it has been freshly reset. The solution/work-around is to
power-cycle the machine if the kernel has a problem detecting
the AT1700.
<sect2>AT2400<label id="at2400">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne, ne2k-pci (+8390)
Yet another PCI NE2000 clone card. This one is based on
the RealTek 8029 chip.
<sect2>AT2450<label id="at2450">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
This is the PCI version of the AT1500, and it doesn't suffer
from the problems that the Boca 79c970 PCI card does.
DMA selection and chip numbering information can be found in
<ref id="lance" name="AMD LANCE">.
More technical information on AMD LANCE based Ethernet cards
can be found in <ref id="amd-notes" name="Notes on AMD...">.
<sect2>AT2500
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: rtl8139
This card uses the RealTek 8139 chip - see the
section <ref id="rtl8139" name="RealTek 8139">.
<sect2>AT2540FX<label id="at2540">
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: eepro100
This card uses the i82557 chip, and hence may/should work
with the eepro100 driver. If you try this please send in
a report so this information can be updated.
<sect1>AMD / Advanced Micro Devices<label id="amd">
<p>
Carl Ching of AMD was kind enough to provide a very
detailed description of all the relevant AMD ethernet
products which helped clear up this section.
<sect2>AMD LANCE (7990, 79C960/961/961A, PCnet-ISA)<label id="lance">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: lance
There really is no AMD ethernet card. You are probably reading this
because the only markings you could find on your card said AMD
and the above number. The 7990 is the original `LANCE' chip,
but most stuff (including this document) refer to all these
similar chips as `LANCE' chips. (...incorrectly, I might add.)
These above numbers refer to chips from AMD
that are the heart of many ethernet cards.
For example, the Allied Telesis AT1500 (see
<ref id="at-1500" name="AT1500">) and the NE1500/2100 (see
<ref id="ne1500" name="NE1500">) use these chips.
The 7990/79c90 have long been replaced by newer versions.
The 79C960 (a.k.a. PCnet-ISA) essentially contains the 79c90
core, along with all the other hardware support required, which
allows a single-chip ethernet solution. The 79c961 (PCnet-ISA+)
is a jumperless Plug and Play version of the '960. The final
chip in the ISA series is the 79c961A (PCnet-ISA II), which
adds full duplex capabilities.
All cards with one of these chips should work with
the lance.c driver, with the exception of very old cards that
used the original 7990 in a shared memory configuration. These
old cards can be spotted by the lack of jumpers for a DMA channel.
One common problem people have is the `busmaster arbitration
failure' message. This is printed out when the LANCE driver
can't get access to the bus after a reasonable amount of time
has elapsed (50us). This usually indicates that the motherboard
implementation of bus-mastering DMA is broken, or some other device
is hogging the bus, or there is a DMA channel conflict. If your BIOS
setup has the `GAT option' (for Guaranteed Access Time) then try
toggling/altering that setting to see if it helps.
Also note that the driver only looks at the addresses:
<tt/0x300, 0x320, 0x340, 0x360/ for a valid card, and any
address supplied by an <tt/ether=/ boot argument is silently
ignored (this will be fixed) so make sure your card is configured
for one of the above I/O addresses for now.
The driver will still work fine, even
if more than 16MB of memory is installed, since low-memory
`bounce-buffers' are used when needed (i.e. any data from
above 16MB is copied into a buffer below 16MB before being
given to the card to transmit.)
The DMA channel can be set with the low bits
of the otherwise-unused dev->mem_start value (a.k.a. PARAM_1).
(see <ref id="ether" name="PARAM_1">)
If unset it is probed for by enabling each free DMA channel
in turn and checking if initialization succeeds.
The HP-J2405A board is an exception: with this board it's easy
to read the EEPROM-set values for the IRQ, and DMA.
See <ref id="amd-notes" name="Notes on AMD...">
for more info on these chips.
<sect2>AMD 79C965 (PCnet-32)<label id="pcnet-32">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
This is the PCnet-32 -- a 32 bit bus-master version of the
original LANCE chip for VL-bus and local bus systems.
chip. While these chips can be operated with the standard
<tt/lance.c/ driver, a 32 bit version (<tt/pcnet32.c/) is
also available that does not have to concern itself with
any 16MB limitations associated with the ISA bus.
<sect2>AMD 79C970/970A (PCnet-PCI)<label id="pcnet-pci">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
This is the PCnet-PCI -- similar to the PCnet-32, but designed
for PCI bus based systems. Please see the
above PCnet-32 information.
This means that you need to build a kernel with
PCI BIOS support enabled. The '970A adds full duplex support
along with some other features to the original '970 design.
Note that the Boca implementation of the 79C970 fails on
fast Pentium machines. This is a hardware problem, as it
affects DOS users as well. See the Boca section for more
details.
<sect2>AMD 79C971 (PCnet-FAST)
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
This is AMD's 100Mbit chip for PCI systems, which also supports
full duplex operation. It was introduced in June 1996.
<sect2>AMD 79C972 (PCnet-FAST+)
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
This has been confirmed to work just like the '971.
<sect2>AMD 79C974 (PCnet-SCSI)
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
This is the PCnet-SCSI -- which is basically treated like
a '970 from an Ethernet point of view.
Also see the above information. Don't ask if the
SCSI half of the chip is supported -- this is the
<em/Ethernet-HowTo/, not the SCSI-HowTo.
<sect1>Ansel Communications<label id="ansel">
<p>
<sect2>AC3200 EISA
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: ac3200
Note that to access this driver during <tt/make config/
you still have to answer `Y' when asked ``Prompt for
development and/or incomplete code/drivers?'' at
the first. This is simply due to lack of feedback on the
driver stability due to it being a relatively rare card.
This driver is included in the present kernel as an
alpha test driver. It is based on the common NS8390
chip used in the ne2000 and wd80x3 cards.
Please see <ref id="alfa" name="Alpha Drivers"> in
this document for important information regarding
alpha drivers.
If you use it, let one of us know how things work out,
as feedback has been low, even though the driver has
been in the kernel since v1.1.25.
If you intend on using this driver as a loadable module
you should probably see
<ref id="modules" name="Using the Ethernet Drivers as Modules">
for module specific information.
<sect1>Apricot
<p>
<sect2>Apricot Xen-II On Board Ethernet
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: apricot
This on board ethernet uses an i82596 bus-master chip.
It can only be at I/O address <tt/0x300/.
By looking at the driver source,
it appears that the IRQ is also hardwired to 10.
Earlier versions of the driver had a tendency to think
that anything living at <tt/0x300/ was an apricot NIC.
Since then the hardware address is checked to avoid these
false detections.
<sect1>Arcnet<label id="arcnet">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: arcnet (arc-rimi, com90xx, com20020)
With the very low cost and better performance of ethernet,
chances are that most places will be giving away their Arcnet
hardware for free, resulting in a lot of home systems with Arcnet.
An advantage of Arcnet is that all of the cards have identical
interfaces, so one driver will work for everyone. It also has
built in error handling so that it supposedly never loses a packet.
(Great for UDP traffic!) Note that the arcnet driver
uses `arc0' as its name instead of the usual `eth0' for
ethernet devices.
There are information files contained in the standard kernel for
setting jumpers, general hints and where to mail bug reports.
Supposedly the driver also works with the 100Mbs ARCnet cards
as well!
<sect1>AT&T
<p>
Note that AT&T's StarLAN is an orphaned technology, like
SynOptics LattisNet, and can't be used in a standard 10Base-T
environment, without a hub that `speaks' both.
<sect2>AT&T T7231 (LanPACER+)
<p>
Status: Not Supported.
These StarLAN cards use an interface similar to the i82586
chip. At one point, Matthijs Melchior
(<tt/matthijs.n.melchior@att.com/) was playing with the 3c507
driver, and almost had something useable working. Haven't
heard much since that.
<sect1>Boca Research<label id="boca">
<p>
Yes, they make more than just multi-port serial cards.
<sect2>Boca BEN400
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne (+8390)
Apparently this is a NE2000 clone, using a VIA VT86C916 chip.
<sect2>Boca BEN (ISA, VLB, PCI)<label id="boca-ben">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: lance, pcnet32
These cards are based on AMD's PCnet chips.
Perspective buyers should be warned that many users have had
endless problems with these VLB/PCI cards. Owners of fast Pentium
systems have been especially hit. Note that this is not a driver
problem, as it hits DOS/Win/NT users as well.
Boca's technical support number is (407) 241-8088, and you
can also reach them at <tt/75300.2672@compuserve.com/.
The older ISA cards don't appear to suffer the same problems.
Boca was offering a `warranty repair' for
affected owners, which involved adding one of the missing
capacitors, but it appears that this fix didn't work 100
percent for most people, although it helps some.
More general information on the AMD chips can be found in
<ref id="lance" name="AMD LANCE">.
More technical information on AMD LANCE based Ethernet cards
can be found in <ref id="amd-notes" name="Notes on AMD...">.
<sect1>Cabletron<label id="ctron">
<p>
Donald writes:
`Yes, another one of these companies that won't release its
programming information. They waited for months before actually
confirming that all their information was proprietary, deliberately
wasting my time. Avoid their cards like the plague if you can.
Also note that some people have phoned Cabletron, and have been
told things like `a D. Becker is working on a driver
for linux' -- making it sound like I work for them. This is
NOT the case.'
<!--
If you feel like asking them why they don't want to release their
low level programming info so that people can use their cards, write
to support@ctron.com.
Tell them that you are using Linux, and are disappointed that they
don't support open systems. And no, the usual driver development
kit they supply is useless. It is just a DOS object file that
you are supposed to link against. Which you aren't allowed to
even reverse engineer.
-->
Apparently Cabletron has changed their policy with respect to
programming information (like Xircom) since Donald made the above
comment several years ago -- send e-mail to <tt/support@ctron.com/
if you want to verify this or ask for programming information.
However, at this point in time, there is little demand for
modified/updated drivers for the older E20xx and E21xx cards.
<sect2>E10**, E10**-x, E20**, E20**-x<label id="e10xx">
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: ne (+8390)
These are NEx000 almost-clones that are reported to
work with the standard NEx000 drivers, thanks to a
ctron-specific check during the probe. If there are
any problems, they are unlikely to be fixed, as the
programming information is unavailable.
<sect2>E2100<label id="e2100">
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: e2100 (+8390)
Again, there is not much one can do when the
programming information is proprietary.
The E2100 is a poor design. Whenever it maps its
shared memory in during a packet transfer, it
maps it into the <em/whole 128K region!/ That means you
<bf/can't/ safely use another interrupt-driven shared
memory device in that region, including another E2100.
It will work most of the time, but every once in
a while it will bite you. (Yes, this problem can
be avoided by turning off interrupts while
transferring packets, but that will almost certainly
lose clock ticks.) Also, if you mis-program the board,
or halt the machine at just the wrong moment, even
the reset button won't bring it back. You will <em/have/
to turn it off and <em/leave/ it off for about 30 seconds.
Media selection is automatic, but you can override this
with the low bits of the dev->mem_end parameter.
See <ref id="ether" name="PARAM_2">. Module users
can specify an <tt/xcvr=N/ value as an <tt/option/ in
the <tt>/etc/conf.modules</tt> file.
Also, don't confuse the E2100 for a NE2100 clone.
The E2100 is a shared memory NatSemi DP8390 design,
roughly similar to a brain-damaged WD8013, whereas
the NE2100 (and NE1500) use a bus-mastering AMD
LANCE design.
There is an E2100 driver included in the standard kernel.
However, seeing as programming info isn't available,
don't expect bug-fixes. Don't use one
unless you are already stuck with the card.
If you intend on using this driver as a loadable module
you should probably see
<ref id="modules" name="Using the Ethernet Drivers as Modules">
for module specific information.
<sect2>E22**<label id="e2200">
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: lance
According to information in a Cabletron Tech Bulletin, these
cards use the standard AMD PC-Net chipset (see <ref id="lance"
name="AMD PC-Net">) and should work with the generic lance
driver.
<sect1>Cogent
<p>
Here is where and how to reach them:
<verb>
Cogent Data Technologies, Inc.
175 West Street, P.O. Box 926
Friday Harbour, WA 98250, USA.
Cogent Sales
15375 S.E. 30th Place, Suite 310
Bellevue, WA 98007, USA.
Technical Support:
Phone (360) 378-2929 between 8am and 5pm PST
Fax (360) 378-2882
Compuserve GO COGENT
Bulletin Board Service (360) 378-5405
Internet: support@cogentdata.com
</verb>
<sect2>EM100-ISA/EISA
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: smc9194
These cards use the SMC 91c100 chip and may work with the
SMC 91c92 driver, but this has yet to be verified.
<sect2>Cogent eMASTER+, EM100-PCI, EM400, EM960, EM964
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de4x5, tulip
These are yet another DEC 21040 implementation that should
hopefully work fine with the standard 21040 driver.
The EM400 and the EM964 are four port cards using a
DEC 21050 bridge and 4 21040 chips.
See <ref id="dec-21040" name="DEC 21040">
for more information on these cards, and the present driver
situation.
<sect1>Compaq
<p>
Compaq aren't really in the business of making ethernet
cards, but a lot of their systems have embedded ethernet
controllers on the motherboard.
<sect2>Compaq Deskpro / Compaq XL (Embedded AMD Chip)
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
Machines such as the XL series have an AMD 79c97x PCI chip
on the mainboard that can be used with the standard LANCE
driver. But before you can use it, you have to do some
trickery to get the PCI BIOS to a place where Linux can
see it. Frank Maas was kind enough to provide the
details:
`` The problem with this Compaq machine however is that the PCI
directory is loaded in high memory, at a spot where the Linux
kernel can't (won't) reach. Result: the card is never detected nor
is it usable (sideline: the mouse won't work either)
The workaround (as described thoroughly in
http://www-c724.uibk.ac.at/XL/)
is to load MS-DOS, launch a little driver Compaq wrote and then
load the Linux kernel using LOADLIN. Ok, I'll give you time to
say `yuck, yuck', but for now this is the only working solution
I know of. The little driver simply moves the PCI directory to
a place where it is normally stored (and where Linux can find it).''
More general information on the AMD chips can be found in
<ref id="lance" name="AMD LANCE">.
<sect2>Compaq Nettelligent/NetFlex (Embedded ThunderLAN Chip)
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: tlan
These systems use a Texas Instruments ThunderLAN chip
Information on the ThunderLAN driver can be found in
<ref id="tlan" name="ThunderLAN">.
<sect2>Compaq PCI card
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: eepro100
Check your card - if it has part number 323551-821
and/or an intel 82558 chip on it then it is another
Intel EEPro100 based card.
<sect1>Danpex
<p>
<sect2>Danpex EN9400
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de4x5, tulip
Yet another card based on the DEC 21040 chip, reported to
work fine, and at a relatively cheap price.
See <ref id="dec-21040" name="DEC 21040">
for more information on these cards, and the present driver
situation.
<sect1>D-Link<label id="d-link">
<p>
<sect2>DE-100, DE-200, DE-220-T, DE-250<label id="de-100">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne (+8390)
Some of the early D-Link cards didn't have the <tt/0x57/
PROM signature, but the ne2000 driver knows about them.
For the software configurable cards, you can get the
config program from <tt/www.dlink.com/.
The DE2** cards were the most
widely reported as having the spurious transfer address
mismatch errors with early versions of linux.
Note that there are also cards from
Digital (DEC) that are also named DE100 and DE200,
but the similarity stops there.
<sect2>DE-520<label id="de-520">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
This is a PCI card using the PCI version of AMD's LANCE chip.
DMA selection and chip numbering information can be found in
<ref id="lance" name="AMD LANCE">.
More technical information on AMD LANCE based Ethernet cards
can be found in <ref id="amd-notes" name="Notes on AMD...">.
<sect2>DE-528
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne, ne2k-pci (+8390)
Apparently D-Link have also started making PCI NE2000 clones.
<sect2>DE-530<label id="de-530">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de4x5, tulip
This is a generic DEC 21040 PCI chip implementation,
and is reported to work with the generic 21040 tulip driver.
Note that this is NOT the DFE-530.
See <ref id="dec-21040" name="DEC 21040">
for more information on these cards, and the present driver
situation.
<sect2>DE-600<label id="de-600">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de600
Laptop users and other folk who might want a quick
way to put their computer onto the ethernet may want
to use this. The driver is included with the default
kernel source tree.
Expect about 180kb/s transfer speed from this via the
parallel port. You should read the README.DLINK
file in the kernel source tree.
Note that the device name that you pass to <tt/ifconfig/
is <em/now/ <tt/eth0/ and not the previously
used <tt/dl0/.
If your parallel port is <em/not/ at the standard <tt/0x378/
then you will have to recompile, as the address is compiled
directly into the driver. Also note that some laptops
implement the on-board parallel port at <tt/0x3bc/ which
is where the parallel ports on monochrome cards were/are.
<sect2>DE-620<label id="de-620">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de620
Same as the DE-600, only with two output formats.
Bjorn has written a driver for this model,
for kernel versions 1.1 and above. See the above information
on the DE-600.
<sect2>DE-650<label id="de-650">
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: de650 (?)
Some people have been using this PCMCIA card for
some time now with their notebooks. It is a basic
8390 design, much like a NE2000. The LinkSys PCMCIA
card and the IC-Card Ethernet are supposedly DE-650 clones
as well. Note that at present, this driver is
<em/not/ part of the standard kernel, and so you will
have to do some patching.
See <ref id="pcmcia" name="PCMCIA Support"> in this document.
<sect2>DFE-530TX
<p>
Status Supported, Driver Name: via-rhine
Another card using the VIA Rhine chipset.
(see <ref id="rhine" name="VIA Rhine">)
Don't confuse this with the DE-530 which is a tulip
based card.
<sect2>DFE-538TX
<p>
Status Supported, Driver Name: rtl8139, 8139too
This card uses the RealTek 8139 chip - see the
section <ref id="rtl8139" name="RealTek 8139">.
<sect1>DFI<label id="dfi">
<p>
<sect2>DFINET-300 and DFINET-400<label id="dfi-300">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne (+8390)
Yet another poor NE clone card - these
use `DFI' in the first 3 bytes of the prom, instead
of using <tt/0x57/ in bytes 14 and 15, which is what all the
NE1000 and NE2000 cards should use. (The 300 is an 8 bit
pseudo NE1000 clone, and the 400 is a pseudo NE2000 clone.)
<sect1>Digital / DEC<label id="dec">
<p>
<sect2>DEPCA, DE100/1, DE200/1/2, DE210, DE422<label id="dec-200">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: depca
There is documentation included in the source file
`depca.c', which includes info on how to use more than
one of these cards in a machine. Note that the DE422 is
an EISA card. These cards are all based on the AMD LANCE chip.
See <ref id="lance" name="AMD LANCE"> for more info.
A maximum of two of the ISA cards can be used, because they
can only be set for <tt/0x300/ and <tt/0x200/ base I/O address.
If you are intending to do this, please read the notes in
the driver source file <tt/depca.c/ in the standard kernel
source tree.
This driver will also work on Alpha CPU based machines, and
there are various ioctl()s that the user can play with.
<sect2>Digital EtherWorks 3 (DE203, DE204, DE205)<label id="dec-ewrk3">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ewrk3
These cards use a proprietary
chip from DEC, as opposed to the LANCE chip used in the
earlier cards like the DE200. These cards support both shared
memory or programmed I/O, although you take about a 50&percnt
performance hit if you use PIO mode. The shared memory size can
be set to 2kB, 32kB or 64kB, but only 2 and 32 have been tested
with this driver. David says that the performance is virtually
identical between the 2kB and 32kB mode. There is more information
(including using the driver as a loadable module) at the top
of the driver file <tt/ewrk3.c/ and also in <tt/README.ewrk3/.
Both of these files come with the standard kernel distribution.
This driver has Alpha CPU support like depca.c does.
The standard driver has a number
of interesting ioctl() calls that can be used to get or clear
packet statistics, read/write the EEPROM, change the
hardware address, and the like. Hackers can see the source
code for more info on that one.
David has also written a configuration utility for this
card (along the lines of the DOS program <tt/NICSETUP.EXE/)
along with other tools. These can be found on
most Linux FTP sites in the directory
<tt>/pub/Linux/system/Network/management</tt> -- look for the
file <tt/ewrk3tools-X.XX.tar.gz/.
<sect2>DE425 EISA, DE434, DE435, DE500 <label id="dec-eisa">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de4x5, tulip
These cards are based on the 21040 chip mentioned below.
The DE500 uses the 21140 chip to provide 10/100Mbs
ethernet connections.
Have a read of the 21040 section below for extra info.
There are also some compile-time options available for
non-DEC cards using this driver. Have a look at
<tt/README.de4x5/ for details.
All the Digital cards will autoprobe for their media (except,
temporarily, the DE500 due to a patent issue).
This driver is also Alpha CPU ready and supports being loaded
as a module. Users can access the driver internals through
ioctl() calls - see the 'ewrk3' tools and the de4x5.c sources
for information about how to do this.
<sect2>DEC 21040, 21041, 2114x, Tulip <label id="dec-21040">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de4x5, tulip
The DEC 21040 is a bus-mastering single chip ethernet solution
from Digital, similar to AMD's PCnet chip. The 21040 is
specifically designed for the PCI bus architecture.
Apparently these chips are no longer being produced, as Intel
has bought the semiconductor portion of DEC and is favouring
their own ethernet chip(s).
You have a choice of <em/two/ drivers for cards based on this
chip. There is the DE425 driver discussed above, and the
generic 21040 `tulip' driver.
<bf/Warning:/ Even though your card may be based upon this chip,
<em/the drivers may not work for you/. David C. Davies writes:
``There are no guarantees that either `tulip.c' OR `de4x5.c'
will run any DC2114x based card other than those they've been
written to support. WHY?? You ask. Because there is a register,
the General Purpose Register (CSR12) that (1) in the DC21140A is
programmable by each vendor and they all do it differently
(2) in the DC21142/3 this is now an SIA control register
(a la DC21041). The only small ray of hope is that we can decode the
SROM to help set up the driver. However, this is not a guaranteed
solution since some vendors (e.g. SMC 9332 card) don't follow the
Digital Semiconductor recommended SROM programming format."
In non-technical terms, this means that if you aren't sure that an
unknown card with a DC2114x chip will work with the linux driver(s),
then make sure you can return the card to the place of
purchase <em/before/ you pay for it.
The 21041 chip is also found in place of the 21040
on most of the later SMC EtherPower cards.
The 21140 is for supporting 100Base-T and
works with the Linux drivers for the 21040 chip.
To use David's <tt/de4x5/ driver with non-DEC cards, have a
look at <tt/README.de4x5/ for details.
If you are having trouble with the tulip driver,
you can try the newest version from Donald's ftp/WWW
site.
<url url="http://www.scyld.com/network"
name="Tulip Driver">
There is also a (non-exhaustive) list of
various cards/vendors that use the 21040 chip.
<sect1>Farallon
<p>
Farallon sells EtherWave adaptors and transceivers. This device
allows multiple 10baseT devices to be daisy-chained.
<sect2>Farallon Etherwave
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c509
This is reported to be a 3c509 clone that includes the
EtherWave transceiver. People have used these successfully
with Linux and the present 3c509 driver. They are too expensive
for general use, but are a great option for special cases. Hublet
prices start at $125, and Etherwave
adds $75-$100 to the price of the board -- worth
it if you have pulled one wire too few, but not if you are two
network drops short.
<sect2>Farallon PCI 593
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de4x5, tulip
It has been reported that this card was detected with
the <tt>de4x5</tt> driver.
<sect1>Fujitsu
<p>
Unlike many network chip manufacturers, Fujitsu have also
made and sold some network cards based upon their chip.
<sect2>Fujitsu FMV-181/182/183/184
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: fmv18x
According to the driver, these cards are a straight forward
Fujitsu MB86965 implementation, which would make them
very similar to the Allied Telesis AT1700 cards.
<sect1>Hewlett Packard<label id="hp">
<p>
The 272** cards use programmed I/O, similar to the NE*000 boards,
but the data transfer port can be `turned off' when you aren't
accessing it, avoiding problems with autoprobing drivers.
Thanks to Glenn Talbott for helping clean up the confusion in this
section regarding the version numbers of the HP hardware.
<sect2>HP Night Director+ 10/100
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
Apparently these cards use the AMD 79C972 chip.
<sect2>27245A<label id="hp-27245a">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: hp (+8390)
8 bit 8390 based 10BaseT, not recommended for all the
8 bit reasons. It was re-designed a couple years
ago to be highly integrated which caused some
changes in initialization timing which only
affected testing programs, not LAN drivers. (The
new card is not `ready' as soon after switching
into and out of loopback mode.)
If you intend on using this driver as a loadable module
you should probably see
<ref id="modules" name="Using the Ethernet Drivers as Modules">
for module specific information.
<sect2>HP EtherTwist, PC Lan+ (27247, 27252A)
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: hp+ (+8390)
The HP PC Lan+ is different to the standard HP PC Lan
card. This driver was added to the list of drivers in the standard
kernel during the v1.1.x development cycle. It can be
operated in either a PIO mode like a ne2000, or a shared
memory mode like a wd8013.
The 47B is a 16 Bit 8390 based 10BaseT w/AUI, and
the 52A is a 16 Bit 8390 based ThinLAN w/AUI.
These cards have 32K onboard RAM for Tx/Rx packet buffering
instead of the usual 16KB, and they both offer LAN
connector autosense.
If you intend on using this driver as a loadable module
you should probably see
<ref id="modules" name="Using the Ethernet Drivers as Modules">
for module specific information.
<sect2>HP-J2405A
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: lance
These are lower priced, and slightly faster than the
27247/27252A, but are missing some features, such
as AUI, ThinLAN connectivity, and boot PROM socket.
This is a fairly generic LANCE design, but a minor
design decision makes it incompatible with a generic
`NE2100' driver. Special support for it (including
reading the DMA channel from the board) is included
thanks to information provided by HP's Glenn
Talbott.
More technical information on LANCE based cards can be found in
<ref id="amd-notes" name="Notes on AMD...">
<sect2>HP-Vectra On Board Ethernet
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: lance
The HP-Vectra has an AMD PCnet chip on the motherboard.
DMA selection and chip numbering information can be found in
<ref id="lance" name="AMD LANCE">.
More technical information on LANCE based cards can be found in
<ref id="amd-notes" name="Notes on AMD...">
<sect2>HP 10/100 VG Any Lan Cards (27248B, J2573, J2577, J2585, J970, J973)
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: hp100
This driver also supports some of the Compex VG products.
Since the driver supports ISA, EISA and PCI cards, it
is found under ISA cards when running <tt/make config/
on a kernel source.
<sect2>HP NetServer 10/100TX PCI (D5013A)
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: eepro100
Apparently these are just a rebadged Intel EtherExpress Pro
10/100B card. See the Intel section for more information.
<sect1>IBM / International Business Machines<label id="ibm">
<p>
<sect2>IBM Thinkpad 300<label id="thinkpad-300">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: znet
This is compatible with the Intel based Zenith Z-note.
See <ref id="z-note" name="Z-note"> for more info.
Supposedly this site has a comprehensive database of
useful stuff for newer versions of the Thinkpad. I haven't
checked it out myself yet.
<url url="http://peipa.essex.ac.uk/html/linux-thinkpad.html"
Name="Thinkpad-info">
For those without a WWW browser handy, try
<tt>peipa.essex.ac.uk:/pub/tp750/</tt>
<sect2>IBM Credit Card Adaptor for Ethernet
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: ? (distributed separately)
People have been using this PCMCIA card with Linux as well.
Similar points apply, those being that you need a supported
PCMCIA chipset on your notebook, and that you will have to
patch the PCMCIA support into the standard kernel.
See <ref id="pcmcia" name="PCMCIA Support"> in this document.
<sect2>IBM 10/100 EtherJet PCI
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: eepro100
This card is reported to be compatible with the Intel
EtherExpress Pro 100 driver.
<sect2>IBM Token Ring
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: ibmtr
To support token ring
requires more than only writing a device driver, it also requires
writing the source routing routines for token ring. It is the
source routing that would be the most time comsuming to write.
Initial driver development was done with IBM ISA and
MCA token ring cards, and tested on an MCA 16/4 Megabit Token
Ring board, but it should work with other Tropic based boards.
<sect1>ICL Ethernet Cards
<p>
<sect2>ICL EtherTeam 16i/32
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: eth16i
This driver supports both the ISA (16i) and EISA (32) versions
of the card. It uses the Fujitsu MB86965 chip that is also
used on the at1700 cards.
<sect1>Intel Ethernet Cards<label id="intel">
<p>
Note that the naming of the various Intel cards is ambiguous
and confusing at best. If in doubt, then check the <tt/i8xxxx/
number on the main chip on the card or for PCI cards, use the
PCI information in the <tt>/proc</tt> directory and then
compare that to the numbers listed here.
<sect2>Ether Express
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: eexpress
This card uses the intel i82586.
Earlier versions of this driver (in v1.2 kernels) were
classed as alpha-test, as it didn't work well for most people.
The driver in the v2.0 kernel seems to work much better
for those who have tried it, although the driver source still
lists it as experimental and more problematic on faster
machines.
The comments at the top of the
driver source list some of the problems (and fixes!) associated
with these cards. The slowdown hack of replacing all the <tt/outb/
with <tt/outb_p/ in the driver has been reported to avoid lockups
for at least one user. Also check that the size of the RAM
buffer reported by the driver matches what the Intel configuration
utility reports.
<sect2>Ether Express PRO/10 (PRO/10+)
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: eepro
Bao Chau Ha has written a driver for these cards that has been
included into early 1.3.x kernels. It may also work with some of
the Compaq built-in ethernet systems that are based on the
i82595 chip. You may have to use the configuration utility
that came with the card to disable PnP support where applicable.
<sect2>Ether Express PRO/10 PCI (EISA)
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: ? (distributed separately)
There is a driver for the PCI version that is distributed
separately from the default kernel.
These cards use the PLX9036 PCI interface chip
with the Intel i82596 LAN controller chip. If your card has
the i82557 chip, then you <em/don't/ have this card, but
rather the version discussed next, and hence want the
EEPro100 driver instead.
You can get the alpha driver for the PRO/10 PCI card,
along with instructions on how to use it at:
<url url="http://www.ultranet.com/~stalba/eep10pci.html"
name="EEPro10 Driver">
If you have the EISA card, you will probably have to hack the
driver a bit to account for the different (PCI vs. EISA)
detection mechanisms that are used in each case.
<sect2>Ether Express PRO 10/100B<label id="eepro100">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: eepro100
Note that this driver will <em/not/ work with the older 100A cards.
The chip numbers listed in the driver are i82557/i82558.
For driver updates and/or driver support, have a look at:
<url url="http://www.scyld.com/network"
name="EEPro-100B Page">
<sect1>Kingston
<p>
Kingston make various cards, including NE2000+, AMD PCnet based
cards, and DEC tulip based cards. Most of these cards should work
fine with their respective driver. See
<url url="http://www.kingston.com" name="Kingston Web Page">
<sect1>LinkSys
<p>
LinkSys make a handful of different NE2000 clones, some straight
ISA cards, some ISA plug and play and some even ne2000-PCI clones
based on one of the supported ne2000-PCI chipsets. There are
just too many models to list here.
LinkSys are linux-friendly, with a linux specific WWW support
page, and even have Linux printed on the boxes of some of their
products. Have a look at:
<tt>http://www.linksys.com/support/solution/nos/linux.htm</tt>
<sect2>LinkSys Etherfast 10/100 Cards.
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: tulip
Note that with these cards there have been several `revisions' (i.e.
different chipset used) all with the same card name. The 1st used
the DEC chipset. The 2nd revision used the Lite-On PNIC 82c168 PCI
Network Interface Controller, and the 3rd
revision of the card uses a LinkSys 82c169 NIC chip.
Support for the latter two has been merged into the standard tulip
driver -- you may need a driver upgrade to get support for them
depending on how old your current driver version is.
More PNIC information is available at:
<tt>http://www.scyld.com/linux/drivers/pnic.html</tt>
More information on the various versions of these cards can be found
at the LinkSys WWW site mentioned above.
<sect2>LinkSys Pocket Ethernet Adapter Plus (PEAEPP)
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de620
This is supposedly a DE-620 clone, and is reported to
work well with that driver. See
<ref id="de-620" name="DE-620"> for more information.
<sect2>LinkSys PCMCIA Adaptor
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de650 (?)
This is supposed to be a re-badged DE-650. See
<ref id="de-650" name="DE-650"> for more information.
<sect1>Microdyne (Eagle)
<p>
Eagle Technology (aka Novell cards) was sold to Microdyne.
If you can't find your card listed here, check the Novell
section of this document.
While Microdyne are not actively selling network cards anymore,
there is still some stuff relating to their products on their site
at <tt/ftp.mcdy.com/
<sect2>Microdyne Exos 205T
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: ?
Another i82586 based card. Dirk Niggemann
<tt/dirk-n@dircon.co.uk/
has written a driver that he classes as ``pre-alpha''
that he would like people to test. Mail him for more details.
<sect1>Mylex
<p>
Mylex can be reached at the following numbers, in case anyone
wants to ask them anything.
<verb>
MYLEX CORPORATION, Fremont
Sales: 800-77-MYLEX, (510) 796-6100
FAX: (510) 745-8016.
</verb>
They also have a web site:
<url url="http://www.mylex.com" name="Mylex WWW Site">
<sect2>Mylex LNE390A, LNE390B
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: lne390 (+8390)
These are fairly old EISA cards that make use of a shared
memory implementation similar to the wd80x3. A driver for
these cards is available in the current 2.1.x series of
kernels. Ensure you set the shared memory address below
1MB or above the highest address of the physical RAM installed in
the machine.
<sect2>Mylex LNP101
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de4x5, tulip
This is a PCI card that is based on DEC's 21040 chip.
It is selectable between 10BaseT, 10Base2 and 10Base5 output.
The LNP101 card has been verified to work with the generic
21040 driver.
See the section on the 21040 chip
(<ref id="dec-21040" name="DEC 21040">)
for more information.
<sect2>Mylex LNP104
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: de4x5, tulip
The LNP104 uses the DEC 21050 chip to deliver <em/four/
independent 10BaseT ports. It should work with recent 21040
drivers that know how to share IRQs, but nobody has
reported trying it yet (that I am aware of).
<sect1>Novell Ethernet, NExxxx and associated clones.<label id="novell">
<p>
The prefix `NE' came from Novell Ethernet. Novell followed the
cheapest NatSemi databook design and sold the manufacturing rights
(spun off?) Eagle, just to get reasonably-priced ethercards into
the market. (The now ubiquitous NE2000 card.)
<sect2>NE1000, NE2000<label id="ne2k">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne (+8390)
The ne2000 is now a generic name for a bare-bones design around
the NatSemi 8390 chip. They use programmed I/O rather than
shared memory, leading to easier installation but
slightly lower performance and a few problems.
Some of the more common problems that arise
with NE2000 cards are listed in
<ref id="ne2k-probs" name="Problems with...">
Some NE2000 clones use the National
Semiconductor `AT/LANTic' 83905 chip, which offers
a shared memory mode similar to the wd8013 and EEPROM
software configuration. The shared memory mode will offer
less CPU usage (i.e. more efficient) than the programmed
I/O mode.
In general it is not a good idea to put a NE2000
clone at I/O address <tt/0x300/ because nearly
<em/every/ device driver probes there at boot. Some
poor NE2000 clones don't take kindly to being prodded
in the wrong areas, and will respond by locking your
machine. Also <tt/0x320/ is bad because SCSI drivers
probe into <tt/0x330/.
Donald has written a NE2000 diagnostic program (ne2k.c)
for all ne2000 cards.
See <ref id="diag" name="Diagnostic Programs"> for more
information.
If you intend on using this driver as a loadable module
you should probably see
<ref id="modules" name="Using the Ethernet Drivers as Modules">
for module specific information.
<sect2>NE2000-PCI (RealTek/Winbond/Compex)<label id="ne2k-pci">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne, ne2k-pci (+8390)
Yes, believe it or not, people are making PCI cards based on
the more than ten year old interface
design of the ne2000. At the moment
nearly all of these cards are based on the RealTek 8029 chip,
or the Winbond 89c940 chip. The Compex, KTI, VIA and Netvin cards
apparently also use these chips, but have a different PCI ID.
The latest v2.0 kernel has support to automatically detect all
these cards and use them. (If you are using a kernel v2.0.34 or
older, you should upgrade to ensure your card will be detected.)
There are now two drivers to choose from; the original ISA/PCI
<tt/ne.c/ driver, and a relatively new PCI-only <tt/ne2k-pci.c/
driver.
To use the original ISA/PCI driver you have to say `Y' to
the `Other ISA cards' option when running <tt/make config/ as
you are actually using the same NE2000 driver as the ISA cards
use. (That should also give you a hint that these cards aren't
anywhere as intelligent as say a PCNet-PCI or DEC 21040 card...)
The newer PCI-only driver differs from the ISA/PCI driver in
that all the support for old NE1000 8 bit cards has been removed
and that data is moved to/from the card in bigger blocks, without
any intervening pauses that the older ISA-NE2000's required for
reliable operation. The result is a driver that is slightly
smaller and slightly more efficient, but don't get too excited
as the difference will not be obvious under normal use. (If you
really wanted maximum efficiency/low CPU use, then a PCI-NE2000
is simply a very poor choice.) Driver updates and more
information can be found at:
<tt>http://www.scyld.com/linux/drivers/ne2k-pci.html</tt>
If you have a NE2000 PCI card that is <em/not/ detected by
the most current version of the driver, please contact the
maintainer of the NE2000 driver as listed
in <tt>/usr/src/linux/MAINTAINERS</tt> along with the output
from a <tt>cat /proc/pci</tt> and <tt>dmesg</tt> so that
support for your card can also be added to the driver.
Also note that various card makers have been known to put
`NE2000 Compatible' stickers on their product boxes even when
it is completely different (e.g. PCNet-PCI or RealTek 8139).
If in doubt check the main chip number against this document.
<sect2>NE-10/100
<p>
Status: Not Supported.
These are ISA 100Mbps cards based on the National Semiconductor
DP83800 and DP83840 chips. There is currently no driver support,
nor has anyone reported that they are working on a driver.
Apparently documentation on the chip is unavailable with the
exception of a single PDF file that doesn't give enough details
for a driver.
<sect2>NE1500, NE2100<label id="ne1500">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: lance
These cards use the original 7990 LANCE chip from AMD and
are supported using the Linux lance driver. Newer NE2100
clones use the updated PCnet/ISA chip from AMD.
Some earlier versions of the lance driver had problems
with getting the IRQ line via autoIRQ from the original
Novell/Eagle 7990 cards. Hopefully this is now fixed.
If not, then specify the IRQ via LILO, and let us know
that it still has problems.
DMA selection and chip numbering information can be found in
<ref id="lance" name="AMD LANCE">.
More technical information on LANCE based cards can be found in
<ref id="amd-notes" name="Notes on AMD...">
<sect2>NE/2 MCA
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: ne2
There were a few NE2000 microchannel cards made by various
companies. This driver, available in v2.2 kernels, will detect
the following MCA cards: Novell Ethernet Adapter NE/2,
Compex ENET-16 MC/P, and the Arco Ethernet Adapter AE/2.
<sect2>NE3200<label id="ne3200">
<p>
Status: Not Supported.
This old EISA card uses a 8MHz 80186 in conjunction with an i82586.
Nobody is working on a driver for it, as there is no information
available on the card, and no real demand for a driver either.
<sect2>NE3210<label id="ne3210">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne3210 (+8390)
This EISA card is completely different from the NE3200, as it
uses a Nat Semi 8390 chip. The driver can be found in the v2.2
kernel source tree. Ensure you set the shared memory address below
1MB or above the highest address of the physical RAM installed in
the machine.
<sect2>NE5500
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
These are just AMD PCnet-PCI cards ('970A) chips. More
information on LANCE/PCnet based cards can be found in
<ref id="lance" name="AMD LANCE">.
<sect1>Proteon
<p>
<sect2>Proteon P1370-EA
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne (+8390)
Apparently this is a NE2000 clone, and works fine with Linux.
<sect2>Proteon P1670-EA
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de4x5, tulip
This is yet another PCI card that is based on DEC's Tulip chip.
It has been reported to work fine with Linux.
See the section on the 21040 chip
(<ref id="dec-21040" name="DEC 21040">)
for more driver information.
<sect1>Pure Data
<p>
<sect2>PDUC8028, PDI8023
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: wd (+8390)
The PureData PDUC8028 and PDI8023 series of cards are
`almost clones' of the wd80x3 cards - there is
special code in the <tt/wd.c/ driver to probe for
these cards.
<sect1>Racal-Interlan
<p>
Racal Interlan can be reached via WWW at
<tt/www.interlan.com/. I believe they were also known as
MiCom-Interlan at one point in the past.
<sect2>ES3210
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: es3210
This is an EISA 8390 based shared memory card. An experimetal
driver is shipped with v2.2 kernels and it is reported to
work fine, but the EISA IRQ and shared memory address detection
appears not to work with (at least) the early revision cards.
(This problem is not unique to the Linux world either...)
In that case, you have to supply them to the driver.
For example, card at IRQ 5 and shared memory <tt/0xd0000/,
with a modular driver, add
<tt/options es3210 irq=5 mem=0xd0000/ to <tt>/etc/conf.modules</tt>.
Or with the driver compiled into the kernel, supply at
boot <tt/ether=5,0,0xd0000,eth0/
The I/O base is automatically detected
and hence a value of zero should be used.
<sect2>NI5010
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: ni5010
You used to have to go get the driver for these old 8 bit
MiCom-Interlan cards separately, but now it is shipped with
the v2.2 kernels as an experimental driver.
<sect2>NI5210
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: ni52
This card also uses one of the Intel chips.
Michael Hipp has written a driver for this card. It is included
in the standard kernel as an `alpha' driver. Michael would like
to hear feedback from users that have this card. See
<ref id="alfa" name="Alpha Drivers"> for important
information on using alpha-test ethernet drivers
with Linux.
<sect2>NI6510 (not EB)<label id="ni65xx">
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: ni65
There is also a driver for the LANCE based NI6510, and it
is also written by Michael Hipp. Again, it is also an
`alpha' driver. For some reason, this card is not compatible
with the generic LANCE driver. See
<ref id="alfa" name="Alpha Drivers"> for important
information on using alpha-test ethernet drivers
with Linux.
<sect2>EtherBlaster (aka NI6510EB)
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: lance
As of kernel 1.3.23, the generic LANCE driver had a check
added to it for the <tt/0x52, 0x44/ NI6510EB specific signature.
Others have reported that this signature is not the same
for all NI6510EB cards however, which will cause the lance
driver to not detect your card. If this happens to you, you
can change the probe (at about line 322 in lance.c) to printk()
out what the values are for your card and then use them instead
of the <tt/0x52, 0x44/ defaults.
The cards should probably be run in `high-performance' mode
and not in the NI6510 compatible mode when using the lance driver.
<sect1>RealTek
<p>
<sect2>RealTek RTL8002/8012 (AT-Lan-Tec) Pocket adaptor<label id="aep-100">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: atp
This is a generic, low-cost OEM pocket adaptor being sold by
AT-Lan-Tec, and (likely) a number of other suppliers. A
driver for it is included in the standard kernel.
Note that there is substantial information contained in the
driver source file `atp.c'.
Note that the device name that you pass to <tt/ifconfig/
was <em/not/ <tt/eth0/ but <tt/atp0/ for earlier versions
of this driver.
<sect2>RealTek 8009
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne (+8390)
This is an ISA NE2000 clone, and is reported to work fine with
the linux NE2000 driver.
The <tt/rset8009.exe/ program can be obtained from RealTek's
WWW site at <tt>http://www.realtek.com.tw</tt> - or via ftp
from the same site.
<sect2>RealTek 8019
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne (+8390)
This is a Plug and Pray version of the above. Use the DOS
software to disable PnP and enable jumperless configuration;
set the card to a sensible I/O address and IRQ and you should
be ready to go. (If using the driver as a module, don't forget
to add an <tt/io=0xNNN/ option to <tt>/etc/conf.modules</tt>).
The <tt/rset8019.exe/ program can be obtained from RealTek's
WWW site at <tt>http://www.realtek.com.tw</tt> - or via ftp
from the same site.
<sect2>RealTek 8029
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne, ne2k-pci (+8390)
This is a PCI single chip implementation of a NE2000 clone.
Various vendors are now selling cards with this chip. See
<ref id="ne2k-pci" name="NE2000-PCI"> for information on
using any of these cards. Note that
this is still a 10+ year old design just glued onto a
PCI bus. Performance won't be staggeringly better than
the equivalent ISA model.
<sect2>RealTek 8129/8139<label id="rtl8139">
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: rtl8139, 8139too
Another PCI single chip ethernet solution from RealTek.
A driver for cards based upon this chip was included
in the v2.0.34 release of linux. You currently have to answer
`Y' when asked if you want experimental drivers for v2.2
kernels to get access to this driver.
Donald says that cards based on this chip are around the same
price (or even cheaper in places - 13 bucks!) as a PCI NE2000
clone card, and while the 8139 design is not the best 10/100
board, it is better than a PCI NE2000 clone card.
The 2.4.x kernels have another driver called <tt>8139too</tt>
which was based on rtl8139 but tries to adress some of the
more common problems people were reporting, so you may wish
to try that if using a 2.4 kernel.
<sect1>Sager
<p>
<sect2>Sager NP943
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: 3c501
This is just a 3c501 clone, with a different S.A. PROM
prefix. I assume it is equally as brain dead as the
original 3c501 as well. The driver checks
for the NP943 I.D. and then just treats it as a 3c501
after that. See <ref id="3c501" name="3Com 3c501">
for all the reasons as to why you really don't want
to use one of these cards.
<sect1>Schneider & Koch
<p>
<sect2>SK G16
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: sk_g16
This driver was included into the v1.1 kernels, and it was
written by PJD Weichmann and SWS Bern. It appears that the
SK G16 is similar to the NI6510, in that it is based on
the first edition LANCE chip (the 7990). Once again, it
appears as though this card won't work with the generic
LANCE driver.
<sect1>SEEQ
<p>
<sect2>SEEQ 8005
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: seeq8005
There is little information
about the card included in the driver, and hence little
information to be put here. If you have a question, you
are probably best trying to e-mail the driver author
as listed in the source.
<sect1>SMC (Standard Microsystems Corp.) <label id="smc">
<p>
The ethernet part of Western Digital was bought out by SMC
many years ago when the wd8003 and wd8013 were the main
product. Since then SMC has continued making 8390 based
ISA cards (Elite16, Ultra, EtherEZ) and also added several
PCI products to their range.
Contact information for SMC:
SMC / Standard Microsystems Corp., 80 Arkay Drive, Hauppage, New York,
11788, USA. Technical Support via phone: 800-992-4762 (USA) or
800-433-5345 (Canada) or 516-435-6250 (Other Countries).
Literature requests: 800-SMC-4-YOU (USA) or 800-833-4-SMC (Canada)
or 516-435-6255 (Other Countries). Technical Support via E-mail:
<tt/techsupt@ccmail.west.smc.com/. FTP Site: <tt/ftp.smc.com/.
WWW Site: <url url="http://www.smc.com" name="SMC">.
<sect2>WD8003, SMC Elite
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: wd (+8390)
These are the 8-bit versions of the card. The
8 bit 8003 is slightly less expensive, but only
worth the savings for light use. Note that some
of the non-EEPROM cards (clones with jumpers, or
old <em/old/ old wd8003 cards) have no way of reporting
the IRQ line used. In this case, auto-irq is used, and if
that fails, the driver silently assings IRQ 5.
You can get the SMC setup/driver disks from SMC's ftp site.
Note that some of the
newer SMC `SuperDisk' programs will fail to detect
the real old EEPROM-less cards. The file <tt/SMCDSK46.EXE/
seems to be a good all-round choice. Also the jumper
settings for all their cards are in an ASCII text file in the
aforementioned archive. The latest (greatest?) version
can be obtained from <tt/ftp.smc.com/.
As these are basically the
same as their 16 bit counterparts (WD8013 / SMC Elite16),
you should see the next section for more information.
<sect2>WD8013, SMC Elite16<label id="8013">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: wd (+8390)
Over the
years the design has added more registers and an
EEPROM. (The first wd8003 cards appeared about ten years ago!)
Clones usually go by the `8013' name, and
usually use a non-EEPROM (jumpered) design.
Late model SMC cards will have the SMC 83c690 chip instead
of the original Nat Semi DP8390 found on earlier cards.
The shared memory design makes the cards a bit faster
than PIO cards, especially with larger packets.
More importantly, from the
driver's point of view, it avoids a few bugs in the
programmed-I/O mode of the 8390, allows safe
multi-threaded access to the packet buffer, and
it doesn't have a programmed-I/O data register that
hangs your machine during warm-boot probes.
Non-EEPROM cards that can't just read the selected
IRQ will attempt auto-irq, and if that fails, they will
silently assign IRQ 10. (8 bit versions will assign IRQ 5)
Cards with a non standard amount of memory on board can
have the memory size specified at boot (or as an option
in <tt>/etc/conf.modules</tt> if using modules).
The standard memory size is
8kB for an 8bit card and 16kB for a 16bit card.
For example, the older WD8003EBT cards could be jumpered
for 32kB memory. To make full use of that RAM, you would
use something like (for I/O=0x280 and IRQ 9):
<code>
LILO: linux ether=9,0x280,0xd0000,0xd8000,eth0
</code>
Also see <ref id="8013-probs" name="8013 problems">
for some of the more common problems and frequently
asked questions that pop up often.
If you intend on using this driver as a loadable module
you should probably see
<ref id="modules" name="Using the Ethernet Drivers as Modules">
for module specific information.
<sect2>SMC Elite Ultra<label id="ultra">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: smc-ultra (+8390)
This ethercard is based on the
83c790 chip from SMC, which has
a few new features over the 83c690. While it has a mode that is
similar to the older SMC ethercards, it's not entirely
compatible with the old WD80*3 drivers. However, in
this mode it shares most of its code with the other
8390 drivers, while operating slightly faster than a
WD8013 clone.
Since part of the Ultra <em/looks like/
an 8013, the Ultra probe is supposed to find an
Ultra before the wd8013 probe has a chance to
mistakenly identify it.
Donald mentioned that it is possible to write a separate
driver for the Ultra's `Altego' mode which allows
chaining transmits at the cost of inefficient use of receive
buffers, but that will probably not happen.
Bus-Master SCSI host adaptor users take note: In the
manual that ships with Interactive UNIX, it mentions
that a bug in the SMC Ultra will cause data corruption
with SCSI disks being run from an aha-154X host adaptor.
This will probably bite aha-154X compatible cards, such
as the BusLogic boards, and the AMI-FastDisk SCSI host
adaptors as well.
SMC has acknowledged the problem occurs with
Interactive, and older Windows NT drivers. It is
a hardware conflict with early revisions of the card
that can be worked around in the driver design. The current
Ultra driver protects against this by only enabling the
shared memory during data transfers with the card. Make sure
your kernel version is at least 1.1.84, or that the driver
version reported at boot is at least <tt/smc-ultra.c:v1.12/
otherwise you are vulnerable.
If you intend on using this driver as a loadable module
you should probably see
<ref id="modules" name="Using the Ethernet Drivers as Modules">
for module specific information.
<sect2>SMC Elite Ultra32 EISA<label id="ultra32">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: smc-ultra32 (+8390)
This EISA card shares a lot in common with its ISA counterpart.
A working (and stable) driver is included in both v2.0
and v2.2 kernels. Thanks go to Leonard
Zubkoff for purchasing some of these cards so that linux support
could be added for them.
<sect2>SMC EtherEZ (8416)
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: smc-ultra (+8390)
This card uses SMC's 83c795 chip and supports the Plug 'n Play
specification. It also has an <em/SMC Ultra/ compatible mode,
which allows it to be used with the Linux Ultra driver.
For best results, use the SMC supplied program (avail. from
their www/ftp site) to disable PnP and configure it for
shared memory mode. See the above information for notes on
the Ultra driver.
For v1.2 kernels, the card had to be configured for
shared memory operation. However v2.0 kernels can use the
card in shared memory or programmed I/O mode. Shared
memory mode will be slightly faster, and use
less CPU resources as well.
<sect2>SMC EtherPower PCI (8432)<label id="smc-pci">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de4x5, tulip
NB: The EtherPower II is an entirely different card. See
below!
These cards are
a basic DEC 21040 implementation, i.e. one big chip
and a couple of transceivers. Donald has used one
of these cards for his development of the generic
21040 driver (aka <tt/tulip.c/). Thanks to Duke Kamstra,
once again, for supplying a card to do development on.
Some of the later revisons of this card use the newer
DEC 21041 chip, which may cause problems with
older versions of the tulip driver. If you have problems,
make sure you are using the latest driver release, which
may not yet be included in the current kernel source tree.
See <ref id="dec-21040" name="DEC 21040"> for more
details on using one of these cards, and the current
status of the driver.
Apparently, the latest revision of the card, the EtherPower-II
uses the 9432 chip. It is unclear at the moment if this one will
work with the present driver. As always, if unsure, check
that you can return the card if it doesn't work with the linux
driver <em/before/ paying for the card.
<sect2>SMC EtherPower II PCI (9432)<label id="smc-pci-II">
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: epic100
These cards, based upon the SMC 83c170 chip, are entirely
different than the Tulip based cards. A new driver
has been included in kernels v2.0 and v2.2 to support
these cards. For more details, see:
<tt>http://www.scyld.com/linux/drivers/epic100.html</tt>
<sect2>SMC 1211TX 10/100
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: rtl8139
Apparently SMC is no longer the same company that brought you
cards like the Ultra and the EPIC. The chip design part is now
called SMSC and you will see the SMC name stuck on low end
OEM boards like this one - a RealTek 8139 with a modified
EEPROM.
<sect2>SMC 3008
<p>
Status: Not Supported.
These 8 bit cards are based on the Fujitsu MB86950, which is an
ancient version of the MB86965 used in the Linux at1700
driver. Russ says that you could probably hack up a driver
by looking at the at1700.c code and his DOS packet driver
for the Tiara card (tiara.asm). They are not very common.
<sect2>SMC 3016
<p>
Status: Not Supported.
These are 16bit I/O mapped 8390 cards, much similar to a generic
NE2000 card. If you can get the specifications from SMC, then
porting the NE2000 driver would probably be quite easy.
They are not very common.
<sect2>SMC-9000 / SMC 91c92/4
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: smc9194
The SMC9000 is a VLB card based on the 91c92 chip.
The 91c92 appears on a few other brand cards as well,
but is fairly uncommon.
<sect2>SMC 91c100
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: smc9194
The SMC 91c92 driver is supposed to work for cards based on this
100Base-T chip, but at the moment this is unverified.
<sect1>Texas Instruments
<p>
<sect2>ThunderLAN<label id="tlan">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: tlan
This driver covers many Compaq built-in ethernet devices,
including the NetFlex and Netelligent groups. It also supports
the Olicom 2183, 2185, 2325 and 2326 products.
<sect1>Thomas Conrad
<p>
<sect2>Thomas Conrad TC-5048
<p>
This is yet another PCI card that is based on DEC's 21040 chip.
See the section on the 21040 chip
(<ref id="dec-21040" name="DEC 21040">)
for more information.
<sect1>VIA
<p>
You probably won't see a VIA networking card, as VIA make several
networking chips that are then used by others in the construction
of an ethernet card. They have a WWW site at:
<tt>http://www.via.com.tw/</tt>
<sect2>VIA 86C926 Amazon
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne, ne2k-pci (+8390)
This controller chip is VIA's PCI-NE2000 offering. You
can choose between the ISA/PCI <tt/ne.c/ driver or
the PCI-only <tt/ne2k-pci.c/ driver. See the PCI-NE2000
section for more details.
<sect2>VIA 86C100A Rhine II (and 3043 Rhine I)<label id="rhine">
<p>
Status Supported, Driver Name: via-rhine
This relatively new driver can be found in current 2.0
and 2.1 kernels. It is an improvement over the 86C926
NE2000 chip in that it supports bus master transfers, but
strict 32 bit buffer alignment requirements limit the
benefit gained from this. For more details and driver
updates, see:
<tt>http://www.scyld.com/linux/drivers/via-rhine.html</tt>
<sect1>Western Digital
<p>
Please see <ref id="smc" name="SMC"> for
information on SMC cards. (SMC bought out Western Digital's
network card section many years ago.)
<sect1>Winbond
<p>
Winbond don't really make and sell complete cards to the
general public -- instead they make single chip ethernet
solutions that other companies buy, stick onto a PCI board
with their own name and then sell through retail stores.
Some setup programs and tech support is available at:
<tt>http://www.winbond.com.tw</tt>
<sect2>Winbond 89c840
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: winbond-840
This chip has been described as `the mutant spawn of a NE2000 and
a Tulip clone' -- see the driver notes for more details.
The driver isn't currently shipped with the kernel, as it
is in the testing phase (as of Sept 1998). It is available at:
<tt>http://www.scyld.com/linux/drivers/test/winbond-840.c</tt>
<sect2>Winbond 89c904, 89c905, 89c906
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne (+8390)
These are Winbond's ISA 10Mbps ne2000 compatible ethernet
chips. Setup programs are available at the Winbond site.
<sect2>Winbond 89c940
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne, ne2k-pci (+8390)
This chip is one of the two commonly found on the low price
PCI ne2000 cards sold by lots of manufacturers. Note that
this is still a 10+ year old design just glued onto a
PCI bus. Performance won't be staggeringly better than
the equivalent ISA model.
<sect1>Xircom<label id="xircom">
<p>
For the longest time, Xircom wouldn't release the programming
information required to write a driver, unless you signed
your life away. Apparently enough linux users have pestered them
for driver support (they claim to support all popular networking
operating systems...) so that they have changed their policy
to allow documentation to be released without having to
sign a non-disclosure agreement. Some people have said they
they will release the source code to the SCO driver, while others
have been told that they are no longer providing information
on `obsolete' products like the earlier PE models.
If you are interested and want to check into this yourself, you can
reach Xircom at 1-800-874-7875, 1-800-438-4526 or +1-818-878-7600.
<sect2>Xircom PE1, PE2, PE3-10B*
<p>
Status: Not Supported.
Not to get your hopes up, but if you have one of these parallel
port adaptors, you may be able to use it in the DOS emulator
with the Xircom-supplied DOS drivers. You will have to allow
DOSEMU access to your parallel port, and will probably have
to play with SIG (DOSEMU's Silly Interrupt Generator).
<sect2>Xircom PCMCIA Cards
<p>
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: ????
Some of the Xircom PCMCIA card(s) have drivers that are
available with David Hinds PCMCIA package. Check there
for the most up to date indformation
<sect1>Zenith<label id="zenith">
<p>
<sect2>Z-Note<label id="z-note">
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: znet
The built-in Z-Note network adaptor is based on the Intel
i82593 using <em/two/ DMA channels. There is an (alpha?) driver
available in the present kernel version. As with all notebook
and pocket adaptors, it is under the `Pocket and portable
adaptors' section when running <tt/make config/.
Also note that the IBM ThinkPad 300 is compatible with the Z-Note.
<sect1>Znyx<label id="zynx">
<p>
<sect2>Znyx ZX342 (DEC 21040 based)
<p>
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de4x5, tulip
You have a choice of <em/two/ drivers for cards based on this
chip. There is the DE425 driver written by David, and the
generic 21040 driver that Donald has written.
Note that as of 1.1.91, David has added a compile time option that
may allow non-DEC cards (such as the Znyx cards) to work with
this driver. Have a look at <tt/README.de4x5/ for details.
See <ref id="dec-21040" name="DEC 21040">
for more information on these cards, and the present driver
situation.
<sect1>Identifying an Unknown Card<label id="mystery">
<p>
Okay, so your uncle's cousin's neighbour's friend had a brother
who found an old ISA ethernet card in the AT case he was using as
a cage for his son's pet hampster. Somehow you ended up with
the card and want to try and use it with linux, but nobody
has a clue what the card is and there isn't any documentation.
First of all, look for any obvious model numbers that might
give a clue. Any model number that contains 2000 will most
likely be a NE2000 clone. Any cards with 8003 or 8013
on them somewhere will be Western/Digital WD80x3 cards
or SMC Elite cards or clones of them.
<sect2>Identifying the Network Interface Controller
<p>
Look for the biggest chip on the card. This will be the
network controller (NIC) itself, and most can be identified by
the part number. If you know which NIC is on the card, the
following might be able to help you figure out what card it is.
Probably still the most common NIC is the National Semiconductor
DP8390 aka NS32490 aka DP83901 aka DP83902 aka DP83905 aka DP83907.
And those are just the ones made by National! Other companies
such as Winbond and UMC make DP8390 and DP83905 clone parts,
such as the Winbond 89c904 (DP83905 clone) and the UMC 9090.
If the card has some form of 8390 on it, then chances are it
is a ne1000 or ne2000 clone card. The second most common 8390
based card are wd80x3 cards and clones. Cards with a DP83905
can be configured to be an ne2000 <em/or/ a wd8013. Never versions
of the genuine wd80x3 and SMC Elite cards have an 83c690 in place
of the original DP8390. The SMC Ultra cards have an 83c790,
and use a slightly different driver than the wd80x3 cards.
The SMC EtherEZ cards have an 83c795, and use the same driver
as the SMC Ultra. All BNC cards based on some sort of 8390 or
8390 clone will usually have an 8392 (or 83c692, or ???392)
16 pin DIP chip very close to the BNC connector.
Another common NIC found on older cards is the Intel i82586.
Cards having this NIC include the 3c505, 3c507, 3c523, Intel
EtherExpress-ISA, Microdyne Exos-205T, and the Racal-Interlan NI5210.
The original AMD LANCE NIC was numbered AM7990, and newer
revisions include the 79c960, 79c961, 79c965, 79c970, and 79c974.
Most cards with one of the above will work with the Linux LANCE
driver, with the exception of the old Racal-Interlan NI6510
cards that have their own driver.
Newer PCI cards having a DEC 21040, 21041, 21140, or similar
number on the NIC should be able to use the linux tulip or
de4x5 driver.
Other PCI cards having a big chip marked RTL8029 or
89C940 or 86C926 are ne2000
clone cards, and the ne driver in linux version v2.0 and up
should automatically detect these cards at boot.
<sect2>Identifying the Ethernet Address
<p>
Each ethernet card has its own six byte address that is
unique to that card. The first three bytes of that address
are the same for each card made by that particular manufacturer.
For example all SMC cards start with <tt/00:00:c0/.
The last three are assigned by the manufacturer uniquely to each
individual card as they are produced.
If your card has a sticker on it giving all six bits of its
address, you can look up the vendor from the first three.
However it is more common to see only the last three bytes
printed onto a sticker attached to a socketed PROM,
which tells you nothing.
You can determine which vendors have which assigned addresses
from RFC-1340. Apparently there is a more up to date listing
available in various places as well. Try a WWW or FTP search
for <tt/EtherNet-codes/ or <tt/Ethernet-codes/ and you will
find something.
<sect2>Identifying the Card by the FCC ID Number
<p>
As part of the certification process a card typically
has to pass before being sold to the user, it gets tested
by the FCC, and from this gets a FCC ID which is supposed
to be printed on the card somewhere. For example, a
card has on it <tt>FCC ID: J158013EWC</tt> - and this
card happens to be a SMC/WD8013-EWC. Some web sites
like <tt>www.driverguide.com</tt> and <tt>drdriver.com</tt>
make use of listings of FCC IDs that may help with less
obvious ID numbers.
<sect2>Tips on Trying to Use an Unknown Card
<p>
If you are still not sure what the card is, but have at least
narrowed it down some, then you can build a kernel with a
whole bunch of drivers included, and see if any of them
autodetect the card at boot.
If the kernel doesn't detect the card, it may be that the
card is not configured to one of the addresses that the
driver probes when looking for a card. In this case, you
might want to try getting <tt/scanport.tar.gz/ from your
local linux ftp site, and see if that can locate where your
card is jumpered for. It scans ISA I/O space from <tt/0x100/
to <tt/0x3ff/ looking for devices that aren't registered in
<tt>/proc/ioports</tt>. If it finds an unknown device starting
at some particular address, you can then explicity point the
ethernet probes at that address with an <tt/ether=/ boot
argument.
If you manage to get the card detected, you can then
usually figure out the unknown jumpers by changing them
one at a time and seeing at what I/O base and IRQ that the
card is detected at. The IRQ settings can also usually be
determined by
following the traces on the back of the card to where the
jumpers are soldered through. Counting the `gold fingers'
on the backside, from the end of the card with the metal bracket,
you have IRQ 9, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 10, 11, 12, 15, 14 at fingers
4, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38 respectively.
Eight bit cards only have up to finger 31.
Jumpers that appear to do nothing usually are for selecting
the memory address of an optional boot ROM. Other jumpers that
are located near the BNC or RJ-45 or AUI connectors are usually
to select the output media. These are also typically near
the `black box' voltage converters marked YCL, Valor, or Fil-Mag.
A nice collection of jumper settings for various cards can
be found at the following URL:
<url url="http://www.slug.org.au/NIC/" name="Ethercard Settings">
<sect1>Drivers for Non-Ethernet Devices
<p>
There are a few other drivers that are in the linux source
that present an <em/ethernet-like/ device to network
programs, while not really being ethernet. These are briefly
listed here for completeness.
<tt/dummy.c/ - The purpose of this driver is to provide a device
to point a route through, but not to actually transmit packets.
<tt/eql.c/ - Load Equalizer, enslaves multiple devices (usually
modems) and balances the Tx load across them while presenting
a single device to the network programs.
<tt/ibmtr.c/ - IBM Token Ring, which is not really ethernet.
Broken-Ring requires source routing and other uglies.
<tt/loopback.c/ - Loopback device, for which all packets
from your machine and destined for your own machine go.
It essentially just moves the packet off the Tx queue and
onto the Rx queue.
<tt/pi2.c/ - Ottawa Amateur Radio Club PI and PI2 interface.
<tt/plip.c/ - Parallel Line Internet Protocol, allows two
computers to send packets to each other over two joined
parallel ports in a point-to-point fashion.
<tt/ppp.c/ - Point-to-Point Protocol (RFC1331), for the
Transmission of Multi-protocol Datagrams over a
Point-to-Point Link (again usually modems).
<tt/slip.c/ - Serial Line Internet Protocol, allows two
computers to send packets to each other over two joined
serial ports (usually via modems) in a point-to-point fashion.
<tt/tunnel.c/ - Provides an IP tunnel through which you can
tunnel network traffic transparently across subnets
<tt/wavelan.c/ - An Ethernet-like radio transceiver
controlled by the Intel 82586 coprocessor which is used on
other ethercards such as the Intel EtherExpress.
<sect>Cables, Coax, Twisted Pair<label id="cable">
<p>
If you are starting a network from scratch, you will have to decide
whether to use thin ethernet (RG58 co-ax cable with BNC connectors)
or 10baseT (twisted pair telco-style cables with RJ-45 eight wire `phone'
connectors).
The old-fashioned thick ethernet, RG-5 cable with N connectors is
obsolete and rarely seen anymore.
See <ref id="cable-intro" name="Type of cable..."> for
an introductory look at cables.
Also note that the FAQ from <em/comp.dcom.lans.ethernet/ has a lot
of useful information on cables and such. FTP to
rtfm.mit.edu and look in <tt>/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/</tt>
for the FAQ for that newsgroup.
<sect1>Thin Ethernet (thinnet)<label id="bnc">
<p>
Thin ethernet cable is pretty inexpensive. If
you are making your own cables solid-core RG58A is $0.27/m. and
stranded RG58AU is $0.45/m. Twist-on BNC
connectors are < $2 ea.,
and other misc. pieces are similarly inexpensive. It is essential
that you properly terminate each end of the cable with 50 ohm
terminators, so budget $2 ea. for a pair. It's also vital that
your cable have no `stubs' -- the `T' connectors must be attached
directly to the ethercards.
There are two main drawbacks to using thinnet. The first is that it
is limited to 10Mb/sec - 100Mb/sec requires twisted pair. The second
drawback is that if you have
a big loop of machines connected together, and some bonehead breaks
the loop by taking one cable off the side of his tee, the whole
network goes down because it sees an infinite impedance (open
circuit) instead of the required 50 ohm termination. Note that
you can remove the tee piece from the card itself without killing
the whole subnet, as long as you don't remove the cables from the
tee itself. Of course this will disturb the machine that you
pull the actual tee off of. 8-) And if you are doing a small
network of two machines, you <em/still/ need the tees and the 50 ohm
terminators -- you <em/can't/ just cable them together!
<!--
Note that there are a few cards out there with `on-board termination'.
These cards have a jumper which when closed, puts a 50 ohm resistor
across the BNC input. With these cards, you can use a BNC T and
terminator like normal, or put the cable directly onto the card
and close the jumper to enable the on-board termination.
-->
There are also some fancy cable systems which <em/look like/
a single lead going to the card, but the lead is actually
two runs of cable
laying side-by-side covered by an outer sheath, giving the
lead an oval shaped cross-section. At the turnaround point
of the loop, a BNC connector is spliced in which connects to
your card. So you have the equivalent of two runs of cable and
a BNC T, but in this case, it is impossible for the user to
remove a cable from one side of the T and disturb the network.
<sect1>Twisted Pair<label id="utp">
<p>
Twisted pair networks require active hubs,
which start around $50, and the raw cable cost can
actually be higher than thinnet. You can pretty much ignore
claims that you can use your existing telephone
wiring as it is a rare installation where that turns out to be the
case.
On the other hand, all 100Mb/sec
ethernet proposals use twisted pair, and most new business
installations use twisted pair.
Also, Russ Nelson adds that `New installations should use Category 5
wiring. Anything else is a waste of your installer's time, as
100Base-whatever is going to require Cat 5.'
If you are only connecting two machines, it is possible to avoid
using a hub, by swapping the Rx and Tx pairs (1-2 and 3-6).
If you hold the RJ-45 connector facing you (as if you were
going to plug it into your mouth) with the lock tab on the top,
then the pins are numbered 1 to 8 from left to right. The pin
usage is as follows:
<verb>
Pin Number Assignment
---------- ----------
1 Output Data (+)
2 Output Data (-)
3 Input Data (+)
4 Reserved for Telephone use
5 Reserved for Telephone use
6 Input Data (-)
7 Reserved for Telephone use
8 Reserved for Telephone use
</verb>
If you want to make a cable, the following should spell it
out for you. Differential signal pairs must be on the same
twisted pair to get the required minimal impedance/loss of a UTP cable.
If you look at the above table, you will see that 1+2 and 3+6 are
the two sets of differential signal pairs. Not 1+3 and 2+6 !!!!!!
At 10MHz, with short lengths, you *may* get away with such errors,
if it is only over a short length. Don't even think about it at 100MHz.
For a normal patch cord, with ends `A' and `B', you want straight
through pin-to-pin mapping, with the input and output each using a
pair of twisted wires (for impedance issues). That means 1A goes to 1B,
2A goes to 2B, 3A goes to 3B and 6A goes to 6B. The wires joining
1A-1B and 2A-2B must be a twisted pair. Also the wires joining 3A-3B
and 6A-6B must be another twisted pair.
Now if you don't have a hub, and want to make a `null cable', what you
want to do is make the input of `A' be the output of `B' and the
output of `A' be the input of `B', without changing the polarity.
Tha means connecting 1A to 3B (out+ A to in+ B) and 2A to 6B
(out- A to in- B). These two wires must be a twisted pair. They carry
what card/plug `A' considers output, and what is seen as input
for card/plug `B'. Then connect 3A to 1B (in+ A to out+ B) and also
connect 6A to 2B (in- A to out- B). These second two must also be
a twisted pair. They carry what card/plug `A' considers input, and
what card/plug `B' considers output.
So, if you consider a normal patch cord, chop one end off of it,
swap the places of the Rx and Tx twisted pairs into the new plug,
and crimp it down, you then have a `null' cable. Nothing complicated.
You just want to feed the Tx signal of one card into the Rx of the
second and vice versa.
Note that before 10BaseT was ratified as a standard, there
existed other network formats using RJ-45
connectors, and the same wiring scheme as above. Examples
are SynOptics's LattisNet, and AT&T's StarLAN.
In some cases, (as with early 3C503 cards) you could set jumpers
to get the card to talk to hubs of different types, but in most cases
cards designed for these older types of networks will not work with
standard 10BaseT networks/hubs. (Note that if the cards also have
an AUI port, then there is no reason as to why you can't use that,
combined with an AUI to 10BaseT transceiver.)
<sect1>Thick Ethernet
<p>
Thick ethernet is mostly obsolete, and is usually used only to remain
compatible with an existing implementation. You can stretch the rules
and connect short spans of thick and thin ethernet together with a
passive $3 N-to-BNC connector, and that's often the best
solution to expanding an existing thicknet. A correct (but expensive)
solution is to use a repeater in this case.
</sect>
<sect>Software Configuration and Card Diagnostics<label id="utils">
<p>
In most cases, if the configuration is done by software,
and stored in an EEPROM, you will usually have to boot
DOS, and use the vendor supplied DOS program to set the cards
IRQ, I/O, mem_addr and whatnot. Besides, hopefully it is
something you will only be setting once. If you don't have
the DOS software for your card, try looking on the WWW site
of your card manufacturer. If you don't know the site name,
take a guess at it, i.e. `www.my_vendor.com' where `my_vendor'
is the name of your card manufacturer. This works for SMC,
3Com, and many <em/many/ other manufacturers.
There are some cards for which Linux versions of
the config utils exist, and they are listed here.
Donald has written a few small card diagnostic
programs that run under Linux. Most of these are a result
of debugging tools that he has created while writing the
various drivers. Don't expect
fancy menu-driven interfaces. You will have to read the
source code to use most of these. Even if your particular
card doesn't have a corresponding diagnostic, you can
still get some information just by typing
<tt>cat /proc/net/dev</tt> -- assuming that your card
was at least detected at boot.
In either case, you will have to run most of these programs
as root (to allow I/O to the ports) and you probably want
to shut down the ethercard before doing so by typing
<tt/ifconfig eth0 down/ first.
<sect1>Configuration Programs for Ethernet Cards<label id="config">
<p>
<sect2>WD80x3 Cards
<p>
For people with wd80x3 cards, there is the program <tt/wdsetup/
which can be found in <tt/wdsetup-0.6a.tar.gz/ on Linux ftp sites.
It is not being actively maintained, and has
not been updated for quite a while. If it works fine for you
then great, if not, use the DOS version that you should have got
with your card. If you don't have the DOS version, you will be
glad to know that the SMC setup/driver disks are available
at SMC's ftp site.
Of course, you <em/have/ to have an EEPROM card to use this utility.
Old, <em/old/ wd8003 cards, and some wd8013 clones use jumpers
to set up the card instead.
<sect2>Digital / DEC Cards
<p>
The Digital EtherWorks 3 card can be configured in a similar
fashion to the DOS program <tt/NICSETUP.EXE/. David C. Davies
wrote this and other tools for the EtherWorks 3 in conjunction
with the driver. Look on you local linux FTP site in the directory
<tt>/pub/linux/system/Network/management</tt> for the file
that is named <tt/ewrk3tools-X.XX.tar.gz/.
<sect2>NE2000+ or AT/LANTIC Cards
<p>
Some Nat Semi DP83905 implementations (such as the AT/LANTIC
and the NE2000+) are software configurable. (Note that these
cards can also emulate a wd8013 card!) You can get the file
<tt>/pub/linux/setup/atlantic.c</tt> from Donald's ftp
server, <tt/www.scyld.com/ to configure this card.
In addition, the configuration programs for the Kingston
DP83905 cards seem to work with all cards, as they don't
check for a vendor specific address before allowing you to
use them. Follow the following URL:
<url url="http://www.kingston.com/download/etherx/etherx.htm"
name="Kingston Software">
and get <tt/20XX12.EXE/ and <tt/INFOSET.EXE/.
Be careful when configuring NE2000+ cards, as you can give
them bad setting values which can cause problems. A typical
example is accidentally enabling the boot ROM in the EEPROM
(even if no ROM is installed) to a setting that conflicts
with the VGA card. The result is a computer that just beeps
at you when you turn it on and nothing appears on the screen.
You can typically
recover from this by doing the following: Remove the card
from the machine, and then boot and enter the CMOS setup.
Change the `Display Adapter' to `Not Installed' and change
the default boot drive to `A:' (your floppy drive).
Also change the `Wait for F1 if any Error' to `Disabled'.
This way, the computer should boot without user intervention.
Now create a bootable DOS floppy (`format a: /s /u') and copy
the program <tt/default.exe/ from the <tt/20XX12.EXE/ archive
above onto that floppy. Then
type <tt>echo default > a:autoexec.bat</tt>
so that the program to set the card back to sane defaults will
be run automatically when you boot from this floppy.
Shut the machine off, re-install the ne2000+ card, insert your
new boot floppy, and power it back up. It will still probably beep
at you, but eventually you should see the floppy light come on
as it boots from the floppy. Wait a minute or two for the floppy
to stop, indicating that it has finished running the <tt/default.exe/
program, and then power down your computer. When you then turn it
on again, you should hopefully have a working display again,
allowing you to change your CMOS settings back, and to change
the card's EEPROM settings back to the values you want.
Note that if you don't have DOS handy, you can do the whole
method above with a linux boot disk that automatically runs
Donald's <tt/atlantic/ program (with the right command line
switches) instead of a DOS boot disk that automatically runs
the <tt/default.exe/ program.
<sect2>3Com Cards
<p>
The 3Com Etherlink III family of cards (i.e. 3c5x9) can
be configured by using another config utility from Donald.
You can get the file <tt>3c5x9setup.c</tt>
from Donald's ftp server, <tt/www.scyld.com/ to
configure these cards. (Note that the DOS 3c5x9B config
utility may have more options pertaining to the new ``B''
series of the Etherlink III family.)
<sect1>Diagnostic Programs for Ethernet Cards<label id="diag">
<p>
Any of the diagnostic programs that Donald has written can
be obtained from his website.
<url url="http://www.scyld.com/network"
name="Ethercard Diagnostics">
Allied Telesis AT1700 -- <tt>at1700.c</tt>
Cabletron E21XX -- <tt>e21.c</tt>
HP PCLAN+ -- <tt>hp+.c</tt>
Intel EtherExpress -- <tt>eexpress.c</tt>
PCI NE2000 cards -- <tt>ne2k-pci-diag.c</tt>
ISA NE2000 cards -- <tt>ne2k.c</tt>
RealTek (ATP) Pocket adaptor <tt>atp-diag.c</tt>
All Other Cards -- try typing <tt>cat /proc/net/dev</tt> and
<tt/dmesg/ to see what useful info the kernel has on the
card in question.
<sect>Technical Information<label id="tech-intro">
<p>
For those who want to understand a bit more about how the card
works, or play with the present drivers, or even try to make
up their own driver for a card that is presently unsupported, this
information should be useful. If you do not fall into this category,
then perhaps you will want to skip this section.
<sect1>Programmed I/O vs. Shared Memory vs. DMA<label id="data-xfer">
<p>
If you can already send and receive back-to-back packets, you just
can't put more bits over the wire. Every modern ethercard can receive
back-to-back packets. The Linux DP8390 drivers (wd80x3, SMC-Ultra,
3c503, ne2000, etc) come pretty close to
sending back-to-back packets (depending on the current interrupt
latency) and the 3c509 and AT1500 hardware have no problem at all
automatically sending back-to-back packets.
<sect2>Programmed I/O (e.g. NE2000, 3c509)
<p>
Pro: Doesn't use any constrained system resources,
just a few I/O registers, and has no 16M limit.
Con: Usually the slowest transfer rate, the CPU is waiting
the whole time, and interleaved packet access is usually
difficult to impossible.
<sect2>Shared memory (e.g. WD80x3, SMC-Ultra, 3c503)
<p>
Pro: Simple, faster than programmed I/O, and allows random
access to packets. Where possible,
the linux drivers compute the checksum of
incoming IP packets as they are copied off the card, resulting in
a further reduction of CPU usage vs. an equivalent PIO card.
Con: Uses up memory space (a big one for DOS users, essentially
a non-issue under Linux), and it still ties up the CPU.
<sect2>Slave (normal) Direct Memory Access (e.g. none for Linux!)
<p>
Pro: Frees up the CPU during the actual data transfer.
Con: Checking boundary conditions, allocating contiguous buffers,
and programming the DMA registers makes it the slowest
of all techniques. It also uses up a scarce DMA
channel, and requires aligned low memory buffers.
<sect2>Bus Master Direct Memory Access (e.g. LANCE, DEC 21040) <label id="master">
<p>
Pro: Frees up the CPU during the data transfer, can string
together buffers, can require little or no CPU time lost on
the ISA bus. Most of the bus-mastering linux drivers now use
a `copybreak' scheme where large packets are put directly into
a kernel networking buffer by the card, and small packets are
copied by the CPU which primes the cache for subsequent
processing.
Con: (Only applicable to ISA bus cards)
Requires low-memory buffers and a DMA channel for
cards. Any bus-master will have problems with other bus-masters
that are bus-hogs, such as some primitive SCSI adaptors. A few
badly-designed motherboard chipsets have problems with
bus-masters. And a reason for not using <em/any/ type of
DMA device is using a 486 processor designed for
plug-in replacement of a 386: these processors must
flush their cache with each DMA cycle. (This includes
the Cx486DLC, Ti486DLC, Cx486SLC, Ti486SLC, etc.)
<sect1>Performance Implications of Bus Width
<p>
The ISA bus can do 5.3MB/sec (42Mb/sec), which sounds like more than
enough for 10Mbps ethernet. In the case of the 100Mbps cards, you
clearly need a faster bus to take advantage of the network bandwidth.
<sect2> ISA Eight bit vs ISA 16 bit Cards<label id="8-vs-16">
<p>
You probably can't buy a new 8 bit ISA ethercard anymore,
but you will find lots of them turning up at computer swap
meets and the like for the next few years, at very low prices.
This will make them popular for ``home-ethernet'' systems.
The above holds true for 16 bit ISA cards now as well, since PCI
cards are now very common.
Some 8 bit cards that will provide adequate performance for
light to average use are the wd8003, the 3c503 and the ne1000.
The 3c501 provides poor performance, and these poor 12 year
old relics of the XT days should be avoided. (Send them to
Alan, he collects them...)
The 8 bit data path doesn't hurt performance that much, as you
can still expect to get about 500 to 800kB/s ftp download speed
to an 8 bit wd8003 card (on a fast ISA bus) from a fast host.
And if most of your net-traffic is going to remote sites, then
the bottleneck in the path will be elsewhere, and the only speed
difference you will notice is during net activity on your local
subnet.
<sect1>32 Bit (VLB/EISA/PCI) Ethernet Cards
<p>
Note that a 10Mbs network typically doesn't justify requiring
a 32 bit interface.
See <ref id="data-xfer" name="Programmed I/O vs. ..."> as to why
having a 10Mbps ethercard on an 8MHz ISA bus is really not a
bottleneck. Even though having the ethercard on a fast bus won't
necessarily mean faster transfers, it will usually mean reduced
CPU overhead, which is good for multi-user systems.
Of course for 100Mbps networks, which are now commonplace,
the 32 bit interface is a must to make use of the full bandwidth.
<sect1>Writing a Driver<label id="skel">
<p>
The only thing that one needs to use an ethernet card with Linux
is the appropriate driver. For this, it is essential that the
manufacturer will release the technical programming information to
the general public without you (or anyone) having to sign your life
away. A good guide for the likelihood of getting documentation
(or, if you aren't writing code, the likelihood that someone
else will write that driver you really, really need) is the
availability of the Crynwr (nee Clarkson) packet driver. Russ
Nelson runs this operation, and has been very helpful in supporting
the development of drivers for Linux. <em/Net-surfers/ can try this
URL to look up Russ' software.
<url url="http://www.crynwr.com"
name="Russ Nelson's Packet Drivers">
Given the documentation, you can write a driver for
your card and use it for Linux (at least in theory).
Keep in mind that some old hardware that was designed for XT type
machines will not function very well in a multitasking
environment such as Linux. Use of these will lead to major
problems if your network sees a reasonable amount of traffic.
Most cards come with drivers for MS-DOS interfaces such as
NDIS and ODI, but these are useless for Linux. Many people
have suggested directly linking them in or automatic
translation, but this is nearly impossible. The MS-DOS
drivers expect to be in 16 bit mode and hook into `software
interrupts', both incompatible with the Linux kernel. This
incompatibility is actually a feature, as some Linux drivers
are considerably better than their MS-DOS counterparts. The
`8390' series drivers, for instance, use ping-pong transmit
buffers, which are only now being introduced in the MS-DOS world.
(Ping-pong Tx buffers means using at least 2 max-size
packet buffers for Tx packets. One is loaded while the card
is transmitting the other. The second is then sent as soon
as the first finished, and so on. In this way, most cards
are able to continuously send back-to-back packets onto
the wire.)
OK. So you have decided that you want to write a driver for the
Foobar Ethernet card, as you have the programming information,
and it hasn't been done yet. (...these are the two main
requirements ;-) You should start with the skeleton
network driver that is provided
with the Linux kernel source tree. It can be found in the file
<tt>linux/drivers/net/skeleton.c</tt> in all recent kernels.
In 2.4.x (and newer) kernels it has been renamed
to <tt>isa-skeleton.c</tt>
Also have a look at the Kernel Hackers Guide, at the
following URL:
<url url="http://www.redhat.com:8080/HyperNews/get/khg.html"
name="KHG">
<sect1>Driver interface to the kernel
<p>
Here are some notes on the functions that you would have to
write if creating a new driver. Reading this in conjunction
with the above skeleton driver may help clear things up.
<sect2>Probe
<p>
Called at boot to check for existence of card. Best if it
can check un-obtrsively by reading from memory, etc. Can
also read from I/O ports. Initial writing to I/O ports in a probe
is <em/not good/ as it may kill another device.
Some device initialization is usually done here (allocating
I/O space, IRQs,filling in the dev->??? fields etc.)
You need to know what io ports/mem the card can be
configured to, how to enable shared memory (if used)
and how to select/enable interrupt generation, etc.
<sect2>Interrupt handler
<p>
Called by the kernel when the card posts an interrupt.
This has the job of determining why the card posted
an interrupt, and acting accordingly. Usual interrupt
conditions are data to be rec'd, transmit completed,
error conditions being reported. You need to know
any relevant interrupt status bits so that you can
act accordingly.
<sect2>Transmit function
<p>
Linked to dev->hard_start_xmit() and is called by the
kernel when there is some data that the kernel wants
to put out over the device. This puts the data onto
the card and triggers the transmit. You need to
know how to bundle the data and how to get it onto the
card (shared memory copy, PIO transfer, DMA?) and in
the right place on the card. Then you need to know
how to tell the card to send the data down the wire, and
(possibly) post an interrupt when done.
When the hardware can't accept additional packets it should set
the dev->tbusy flag. When additional room is available, usually
during a transmit-complete interrupt, dev->tbusy should be cleared
and the higher levels informed with <tt/mark_bh(INET_BH)/.
<sect2>Receive function
<p>
Called by the kernel interrupt handler when the card reports
that there is data on the card. It pulls the data off
the card, packages it into a sk_buff and lets the
kernel know the data is there for it by doing a
netif_rx(sk_buff). You need to know how to enable
interrupt generation upon Rx of data, how to check any
relevant Rx status bits, and how to get that data off the
card (again sh mem, PIO, DMA, etc.)
<sect2>Open function
<p>
linked to dev->open and called by the networking layers
when somebody does <tt/ifconfig eth0 up/ - this
puts the device on line and enables it for Rx/Tx of
data. Any special initialization incantations that were
not done in the probe sequence (enabling IRQ generation, etc.)
would go in here.
<sect2>Close function (optional)
<p>
This puts the card in a sane state when someone
does <tt/ifconfig eth0 down/.
It should free the IRQs and DMA channels if the hardware permits,
and turn off anything that will save power (like the transceiver).
<sect2>Miscellaneous functions
<p>
Things like a reset function, so that if things go south,
the driver can try resetting the card as a last ditch effort.
Usually done when a Tx times out or similar. Also a function
to read the statistics registers of the card if so equipped.
<sect1>Technical information from 3Com<label id="3com-tech">
<p>
If you are interested in working on drivers for 3Com cards,
you can get technical documentation from 3Com. Cameron has
been kind enough to tell us how to go about it below:
3Com's Ethernet Adapters are documented for driver writers
in our `Technical References' (TRs). These manuals describe
the programmer interfaces to the boards but they don't talk
about the diagnostics, installation programs, etc that end
users can see.
The Interface Products Group marketing department has the
TRs to give away. To keep this program efficient, we
centralized it in a thing called `CardFacts.' CardFacts is
an automated phone system. You call it with a touch-tone
phone and it faxes you stuff. To get a TR, call CardFacts
at 408-727-7021. Ask it for Developer's Order Form,
document number 9070. Have your fax number ready when you
call. Fill out the order form and fax it to 408-764-5004.
Manuals are shipped by Federal Express 2nd Day Service.
There are people here who think we are too free with the
manuals, and they are looking for evidence that the system
is too expensive, or takes too much time and effort.
So far, 3Com customers have been really good about
this, and there's no problem with the level of requests
we've been getting. We need your continued cooperation and
restraint to keep it that way.
<sect1>Notes on AMD PCnet / LANCE Based cards<label id="amd-notes">
<p>
The AMD LANCE (Local Area Network Controller for Ethernet)
was the original offering, and has since been replaced by
the `PCnet-ISA' chip, otherwise known as the 79C960.
Note that the name `LANCE'
has stuck, and some people will refer to the new chip by the old
name. Dave Roberts of the Network Products Division of AMD was kind
enough to contribute the following information regarding this chip:
`Functionally, it is equivalent to a NE1500. The register set
is identical to the old LANCE with the 1500/2100 architecture
additions. Older 1500/2100 drivers will work on the PCnet-ISA.
The NE1500 and NE2100 architecture is basically the same.
Initially Novell called it the 2100, but then tried to distinguish
between coax and 10BASE-T cards. Anything that was 10BASE-T only was
to be numbered in the 1500 range. That's the only difference.
Many companies offer PCnet-ISA based products, including HP,
Racal-Datacom, Allied Telesis, Boca Research, Kingston Technology, etc.
The cards are basically the same except that some manufacturers
have added `jumperless' features that allow the card to
be configured in software. Most have not. AMD offers a standard
design package for a card that uses the PCnet-ISA and many
manufacturers use our design without change.
What this means is that anybody who wants to write drivers for
most PCnet-ISA based cards can just get the data-sheet from AMD. Call
our literature distribution center at (800)222-9323 and ask for the
Am79C960, PCnet-ISA data sheet. It's free.
A quick way to understand whether the card is a `stock' card
is to just look at it. If it's stock, it should just have one large
chip on it, a crystal, a small IEEE address PROM, possibly a socket
for a boot ROM, and a connector (1, 2, or 3, depending on the media
options offered). Note that if it's a coax card, it will have some
transceiver stuff built onto it as well, but that should be near the
connector and away from the PCnet-ISA.'
A note to would-be card hackers is that different LANCE
implementations do `restart' in different ways. Some pick up
where they left off in the ring, and others start right from
the beginning of the ring, as if just initialised.
<sect1>Multicast and Promiscuous Mode<label id="promisc">
<p>
Another one of the things Donald has worked on is
implementing multicast and promiscuous mode hooks.
All of the <em/released/ (i.e. <bf/not/ ALPHA) ISA drivers
now support promiscuous mode.
Donald writes:
`I'll start by discussing promiscuous mode, which is
conceptually easy to implement. For most hardware you
only have to set a register bit, and from then on you get
every packet on the wire. Well, it's almost that easy;
for some hardware you have to shut the board (potentially
dropping a few packet), reconfigure it, and then re-enable
the ethercard.
OK, so that's easy, so I'll move on something that's not
quite so obvious: Multicast. It can be done two ways:
<enum>
<item> Use promiscuous mode, and a packet filter like the
Berkeley packet filter (BPF). The BPF is a pattern matching
stack language, where you write a program that picks out the
addresses you are interested in. Its advantage is that it's
very general and programmable. Its disadvantage is that there
is no general way for the kernel to avoid turning on promiscuous
mode and running every packet on the wire through every registered
packet filter. See <ref id="bpf" name="The Berkeley Packet Filter">
for more info.
<item> Using the built-in multicast filter that most etherchips have.
</enum>
I guess I should list what a few ethercards/chips provide:
<verb>
Chip/card Promiscuous Multicast filter
----------------------------------------
Seeq8001/3c501 Yes Binary filter (1)
3Com/3c509 Yes Binary filter (1)
8390 Yes Autodin II six bit hash (2) (3)
LANCE Yes Autodin II six bit hash (2) (3)
i82586 Yes Hidden Autodin II six bit hash (2) (4)
</verb>
<enum>
<item> These cards claim to have a filter, but it's a simple
yes/no `accept all multicast packets', or `accept no
multicast packets'.
<item> AUTODIN II is the standard ethernet CRC (checksum)
polynomial. In this scheme multicast addresses are hashed
and looked up in a hash table. If the corresponding bit
is enabled, this packet is accepted. Ethernet packets are
laid out so that the hardware to do this is trivial -- you
just latch six (usually) bits from the CRC circuit (needed
anyway for error checking) after the first six octets (the
destination address), and use them as an index into the
hash table (six bits -- a 64-bit table).
<item> These chips use the six bit hash, and must have the
table computed and loaded by the host. This means the
kernel must include the CRC code.
<item> The 82586 uses the six bit hash internally, but it
computes the hash table itself from a list of multicast
addresses to accept.
</enum>
Note that none of these chips do perfect filtering, and we
still need a middle-level module to do the final
filtering. Also note that in every case we must keep a
complete list of accepted multicast addresses to recompute
the hash table when it changes.
<sect1>The Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF)<label id="bpf">
<p>
The general idea of the developers is
that the BPF functionality should not be provided
by the kernel, but should be in a (hopefully little-used)
compatibility library.
For those not in the know: BPF (the Berkeley Packet Filter)
is an mechanism for specifying to the kernel networking layers
what packets you are interested in. It's implemented as a
specialized stack language interpreter built into a low level
of the networking code. An application passes a program
written in this language to the kernel, and the kernel runs the
program on each incoming packet. If the kernel has multiple
BPF applications, each program is run on each packet.
The problem is that it's difficult to deduce what kind of
packets the application is really interested in from the packet
filter program, so the general solution is to always run the
filter. Imagine a program that registers a BPF program to
pick up a low data-rate stream sent to a multicast address.
Most ethernet cards have a hardware multicast address filter
implemented as a 64 entry hash table that ignores most unwanted
multicast packets, so the capability exists to make this a very
inexpensive operation. But with the BPF the kernel must switch
the interface to promiscuous mode, receive _all_ packets, and
run them through this filter. This is work, BTW, that's very
difficult to account back to the process requesting the packets.
<sect>Networking with a Laptop/Notebook Computer<label id="notebook">
<p>
There are several ways to put your laptop on a network.
You can use the SLIP code (and run at serial line speeds);
you can get a notebook with a supported
PCMCIA slot built-in; you can get a laptop with a
docking station and plug in an ISA ethercard; or you can use a
parallel port Ethernet adapter.
<sect1>Using SLIP
<p>
This is the cheapest solution, but by far the most difficult. Also,
you will not get very high transmission rates. Since SLIP is not
really related to ethernet cards, it will not be discussed further
here. See the NET-2 Howto.
<sect1>PCMCIA Support<label id="pcmcia">
<p>
Try and
determine exactly what hardware you have (ie. card manufacturer,
PCMCIA chip controller manufacturer) and then ask on the LAPTOPS
channel. Regardless, don't expect things to be all that simple.
Expect to have to fiddle around a bit, and patch kernels, etc.
Maybe someday you will be able to type `make config' 8-)
At present, the two PCMCIA chipsets that are supported are
the Databook TCIC/2 and the intel i82365.
There is a number of programs on tsx-11.mit.edu in
/pub/linux/packages/laptops/ that you may find useful. These
range from PCMCIA Ethercard drivers to programs that communicate
with the PCMCIA controller chip. Note that these drivers are
usually tied to a specific PCMCIA chip (ie. the intel 82365
or the TCIC/2)
For NE2000 compatible cards, some people have had success
with just configuring the card under DOS, and then booting
linux from the DOS command prompt via <tt/loadlin/.
Things are looking up for Linux users that want PCMCIA support, as
substantial progress is being made. Pioneering this effort is
David Hinds. His latest PCMCIA support package can be obtained
from:
<url url="ftp://cb-iris.stanford.edu/pub/pcmcia"
name="PCMCIA Package">
Look for a file like
<tt/pcmcia-cs-X.Y.Z.tgz/ where X.Y.Z will be the latest version
number. This is most likely uploaded to the <tt/tsx-11.mit.edu/
FTP site as well.
Note that Donald's PCMCIA enabler works as a user-level
process, and David Hinds' is a kernel-level solution.
You may be best served by David's package as it is
much more widely used and under continuous development.
<sect1>ISA Ethercard in the Docking Station.
<p>
Docking stations for laptops typically cost about $250
and provide two full-size ISA slots, two serial and one
parallel port. Most docking stations are powered off of the
laptop's batteries, and a few allow adding extra batteries in the
docking station if you use short ISA cards. You can add an inexpensive
ethercard and enjoy full-speed ethernet performance.
<sect1>Pocket / parallel port adaptors.
<p>
The `pocket' ethernet adaptors may also fit your need.
Note that the transfer speed will not be all that great
(perhaps 200kB/s tops?) due to the limitations of the
parallel port interface.
Also most tie you down with a wall-brick power supply.
You can sometimes avoid the wall-brick with the adaptors by buying
or making a cable that draws power from the laptop's keyboard
port. (See <ref id="aep-100" name="keyboard power">)
See <ref id="de-600" name="DE-600 / DE-620"> and
<ref id="aep-100" name="RealTek"> for two supported
pocket adaptors.
<sect>Miscellaneous.<label id="misc">
<p>
Any other associated stuff that didn't fit in anywhere else gets
dumped here. It may not be relevant, and it may not be of general
interest but it is here anyway.
<sect1>Passing Ethernet Arguments to the Kernel<label id="lilo">
<p>
Here are two generic kernel commands that can be passed to
the kernel at boot time (<tt/ether/ and <tt/reserve/).
This can be done with LILO, loadlin,
or any other booting utility that accepts optional arguments.
For example, if the command was `blah' and it expected 3 arguments
(say 123, 456, and 789) then, with LILO, you would use:
<tt>LILO: linux blah=123,456,789</tt>
For more information on (and a complete list of) boot time
arguments, please see the
<url url="http://metalab.unc.edu/mdw/HOWTO/BootPrompt-HOWTO.html"
name="BootPrompt-HOWTO">
<sect2>The <tt/ether/ command<label id="ether">
<p>
The <tt/ether=/ argument is used in conjunction with
drivers that are directly built into the kernel. The
<tt/ether=/ argument will have <em/absolutely no effect/
on a modular driver. In its most generic form, it
looks something like this:
<tscreen>
ether=IRQ,BASE_ADDR,PARAM_1,PARAM_2,NAME
</tscreen>
All arguments are optional. The first non-numeric argument
is taken as the NAME.
<bf/IRQ:/
Obvious. An IRQ value of `0' (usually the default) means to autoIRQ.
It's a historical accident that the IRQ setting is first rather than
the base_addr -- this will be fixed whenever something else changes.
<bf/BASE_ADDR:/
Also obvious. A value of `0' (usually the default) means to
probe a card-type-specific address list for an ethercard.
<bf/PARAM_1:/
It was orginally used as an override value for the memory start
for a shared-memory ethercard, like the WD80*3.
Some drivers use the low four bits of this value to set the debug
message level. 0 -- default, 1-7 -- level 1..7, (7 is maximum
verbosity) 8 -- level 0 (no messages). Also, the LANCE driver
uses the low four bits of this value to select the DMA channel.
Otherwise it uses auto-DMA.
<bf/PARAM_2:/
The 3c503 driver uses this to select between the internal and external
transceivers. 0 -- default/internal, 1 -- AUI external.
The Cabletron E21XX card also uses the low 4 bits of PARAM_2 to
select the output media. Otherwise it detects automatically.
<bf/NAME:/
Selects the network device the values refer to. The standard kernel
uses the names `eth0', `eth1', `eth2' and `eth3' for bus-attached
ethercards, and `atp0' for the parallel port `pocket' ethernet
adaptor. The arcnet driver uses `arc0' as its name.
The default setting is for a single ethercard to be probed for as
`eth0'. Multiple cards can only be enabled by explicitly setting up
their base address using these LILO parameters.
The 1.0 kernel has LANCE-based ethercards as a special case. LILO
arguments are ignored, and LANCE cards are always assigned
`eth<n>' names starting at `eth0'. Additional non-LANCE ethercards
must be explicitly assigned to `eth<n+1>', and the usual `eth0'
probe disabled with something like `ether=0,-1,eth0'.
( Yes, this is bug. )
<sect2> The <tt/reserve/ command<label id="reserve">
<p>
This next lilo command is used just like `ether=' above, ie. it is
appended to the name of the boot select specified in lilo.conf
<tscreen>
reserve=IO-base,extent{,IO-base,extent...}
</tscreen>
In some machines it may be necessary to prevent device drivers from
checking for devices (auto-probing) in a specific region. This may be
because of poorly designed hardware that causes the boot to <em/freeze/
(such as some ethercards), hardware that is mistakenly identified,
hardware whose state is changed by an earlier probe, or merely
hardware you don't want the kernel to initialize.
The <tt/reserve/ boot-time argument addresses this problem by specifying
an I/O port region that shouldn't be probed. That region is reserved
in the kernel's port registration table as if a device has already
been found in that region. Note that this mechanism shouldn't be
necessary on most machines. Only when there is a problem or special
case would it be necessary to use this.
The I/O ports in the specified region are protected against
device probes. This was put in to be used when some driver was
hanging on a NE2000, or misidentifying some other device
as its own. A correct device driver shouldn't probe a reserved
region, unless another boot argument explicitly specifies that
it do so. This implies that <tt/reserve/ will most often be used
with some other boot argument. Hence if you specify a <tt/reserve/
region to protect a specific device, you must generally specify
an explicit probe for that device. Most drivers ignore the port
registration table if they are given an explicit address.
For example, the boot line
<tscreen>
LILO: linux reserve=0x300,32 ether=0,0x300,eth0
</tscreen>
keeps all device drivers except the ethercard drivers from
probing 0x300-0x31f.
As usual with boot-time specifiers there is an 11 parameter limit,
thus you can only specify 5 reserved regions per <tt/reserve/ keyword.
Multiple <tt/reserve/ specifiers will work if you have an unusually
complicated request.
<sect1>Using the Ethernet Drivers as Modules<label id="modules">
<p>
Most of the linux distributions now ship kernels that have
very few drivers built-in. The drivers are instead supplied as
a bunch of independent dynamically loadable modules. These
modular drivers are typically loaded by the administrator
with the <tt/modprobe(8)/ command, or in some cases they are
automatically loaded by the kernel through `kerneld' (in
2.0) or `kmod' (in 2.1) which then calls <tt/modprobe/.
You particular distribution may offer nice graphical
configuration tools for setting up ethernet modules. If possible
you should try and use them first. The description that follows
here gives information on what underlies any fancy configuration
program, and what these programs change.
The information that controls what modules are to be used and
what options are supplied to each module is usually stored in
the file <tt>/etc/conf.modules</tt>. The two main options of
interest (for ethernet cards) that will be used in this file
are <tt/alias/ and <tt/options/. The <tt/modprobe/ command
consults this file for module information.
The actual modules themselves are typically stored in a directory
named <tt>/lib/modules/`uname -r`/net</tt> where the
<tt/uname -r/ command gives the kernel version (e.g. 2.0.34).
You can look in there to see which module matches your card.
The first thing you need in your <tt/conf.modules/ file is
something to tell <tt/modprobe/ what driver to use for the
<tt/eth0/ (and <tt/eth1/ and...) network interface. You
use the <tt/alias/ command for this. For example, if you
have an ISA SMC EtherEZ card which uses the <tt/smc-ultra.o/
driver module, you need to <tt/alias/ this driver to <tt/eth0/
by adding the line:
<verb>
alias eth0 smc-ultra
</verb>
The other thing you may need is an <tt/options/ line indicating
what options are to be used with a particular module (or module
alias). Continuing with the above example, if you only used the
single <tt/alias/ line with no <tt/options/ line, the kernel would
warn you (see <tt/dmesg/) that autoprobing for ISA cards is not
a good idea. To get rid of this warning, you would add another
line telling the module what I/O base the card is configured to,
in this case say the hexidecimal address <tt/0x280/ for example.
<verb>
options smc-ultra io=0x280
</verb>
Most ISA modules accept parameters like <tt/io=0x340/ and
<tt/irq=12/ on the <tt/insmod/ command line. It is <em/REQUIRED/
or at least <em/STRONGLY ADVISED/ that you supply these parameters
to avoid probing for the card. Unlike PCI and EISA devices,
there is no real safe way to do auto-probing for most ISA devices,
and so it should be avoided when using drivers as modules.
A list of all the options that each module accepts can be
found in the file:
<tt>/usr/src/linux/Documentation/networking/net-modules.txt</tt>
It is recommended that you read that to find out what options
you can use for your particular card.
Note that some modules support comma separated value lists for modules
that have the capability to handle multiple devices from a single
module, such as all the 8390 based drivers, and the PLIP driver.
For exmple:
<code>
options 3c503 io=0x280,0x300,0x330,0x350 xcvr=0,1,0,1
</code>
The above would have the one module controlling four
3c503 cards, with card 2 and 4 using external
transcievers. Don't put spaces around the `=' or commas.
Also note that a <em/busy/ module can't be removed. That means
that you will have to <tt/ifconfig eth0 down/ (shut down the
ethernet card) before you can remove the module(s).
The command <tt/lsmod/ will show you what modules are
loaded, whether they are in use, and <tt/rmmod/ will remove them.
<sect1>Related Documentation
<p>
Much of this info came from saved postings from the comp.os.linux
groups, which shows that it is a valuable resource of information.
Other useful information came from a bunch of small files by Donald
himself. Of course, if you are setting up an Ethernet card,
then you will want to read the NET-2 Howto so that you can actually
configure the software you will use. Also, if you fancy yourself as
a bit of a hacker, you can always scrounge some additional info
from the driver source files as well. There is usually a paragraph
or two in there describing any important points before any actual
code starts..
For those looking for information that is not specific in any way
to Linux (i.e. what is 10BaseT, what is AUI, what does a hub do, etc.)
I strongly recommend making use of the newsgroup <em/comp.dcom.lans.ethernet/
and/or <em/comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.networking/. Newsgroup archives
such as those at <tt/dejanews.com/ can also be an invaluable source
of information.
You can grab the newsgroup FAQ from RTFM (which holds all the newsgroup
FAQs) at the following URL:
<url url="ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/"
name="Usenet FAQs">
You can also have a look at the `Ethernet-HomePage' so to speak,
which is at the following URL:
<url url="http://wwwhost.ots.utexas.edu/ethernet/ethernet-home.html"
name="Ethernet-HomePage">
<sect1>Disclaimer and Copyright<label id="copyright">
<p>
This document is <em/not/ gospel. However, it is probably the most
up to date info that you will be able to find. Nobody is responsible
for what happens to your hardware but yourself. If your ethercard
or any other hardware goes up in smoke (...nearly impossible!)
we take no responsibility. ie. THE AUTHORS ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE
FOR ANY DAMAGES INCURRED DUE TO ACTIONS TAKEN BASED ON THE
INFORMATION INCLUDED IN THIS DOCUMENT.
This document is Copyright (c) 1993-1999 by Paul Gortmaker.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies
of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission
notice are preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions
of this document under the conditions for verbatim copying,
provided that this copyright notice is included exactly as in
the original, and that the entire resulting derived work is
distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical
to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations
of this document into another language, under the above
conditions for modified versions.
A hint to people considering doing a translation. First,
translate the SGML source (available via FTP from the HowTo
main site) so that you can then generate other output formats.
Be sure to keep a copy of the original English SGML source that
you translated from! When an updated HowTo is released,
get the new SGML source for that version, and then a simple
<tt/diff -u old.sgml new.sgml/ will show you exactly what has
changed so that you can easily incorporate those changes into
your translated SMGL source without having to re-read or
re-translate everything.
If you are intending to incorporate this document into a
published work, please make contact (via e-mail) so that
you can be supplied with the most up to date information
available. In the past, out of date versions of the Linux
HowTo documents have been published, which caused the developers
undue grief from being plagued with questions that were already
answered in the up to date versions.
<sect1>Closing
<p>
If you have found any glaring typos, or outdated info in this
document, please send an e-mail. It is big, and it
is easy to overlook stuff. If you have e-mailed about a change,
and it hasn't been included in the next version, please don't
hesitate to send it again, as it might have got lost amongst
the usual sea of SPAM and junk mail I get.
Thanks!
Paul Gortmaker, <tt/p_gortmaker@yahoo.com/
</article>
