1Linux and the 3Com EtherLink III Series Ethercards (driver v1.18c and higher) 2---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 4This file contains the instructions and caveats for v1.18c and higher versions 5of the 3c509 driver. You should not use the driver without reading this file. 6 7release 1.0 828 February 2002 9Current maintainer (corrections to): 10 David Ruggiero <jdr@farfalle.com> 11 12---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 14(0) Introduction 15 16The following are notes and information on using the 3Com EtherLink III series 17ethercards in Linux. These cards are commonly known by the most widely-used 18card's 3Com model number, 3c509. They are all 10mb/s ISA-bus cards and shouldn't 19be (but sometimes are) confused with the similarly-numbered PCI-bus "3c905" 20(aka "Vortex" or "Boomerang") series. Kernel support for the 3c509 family is 21provided by the module 3c509.c, which has code to support all of the following 22models: 23 24 3c509 (original ISA card) 25 3c509B (later revision of the ISA card; supports full-duplex) 26 3c589 (PCMCIA) 27 3c589B (later revision of the 3c589; supports full-duplex) 28 3c529 (MCA) 29 3c579 (EISA) 30 31Large portions of this documentation were heavily borrowed from the guide 32written the original author of the 3c509 driver, Donald Becker. The master 33copy of that document, which contains notes on older versions of the driver, 34currently resides on Scyld web server: http://www.scyld.com/network/3c509.html. 35 36 37(1) Special Driver Features 38 39Overriding card settings 40 41The driver allows boot- or load-time overriding of the card's detected IOADDR, 42IRQ, and transceiver settings, although this capability shouldn't generally be 43needed except to enable full-duplex mode (see below). An example of the syntax 44for LILO parameters for doing this: 45 46 ether=10,0x310,3,0x3c509,eth0 47 48This configures the first found 3c509 card for IRQ 10, base I/O 0x310, and 49transceiver type 3 (10base2). The flag "0x3c509" must be set to avoid conflicts 50with other card types when overriding the I/O address. When the driver is 51loaded as a module, only the IRQ and transceiver setting may be overridden. 52For example, setting two cards to 10base2/IRQ10 and AUI/IRQ11 is done by using 53the xcvr and irq module options: 54 55 options 3c509 xcvr=3,3 irq=10,11 56 57 58(2) Full-duplex mode 59 60The v1.18c driver added support for the 3c509B's full-duplex capabilities. 61In order to enable and successfully use full-duplex mode, three conditions 62must be met: 63 64(a) You must have a Etherlink III card model whose hardware supports full- 65duplex operations. Currently, the only members of the 3c509 family that are 66positively known to support full-duplex are the 3c509B (ISA bus) and 3c589B 67(PCMCIA) cards. Cards without the "B" model designation do *not* support 68full-duplex mode; these include the original 3c509 (no "B"), the original 693c589, the 3c529 (MCA bus), and the 3c579 (EISA bus). 70 71(b) You must be using your card's 10baseT transceiver (i.e., the RJ-45 72connector), not its AUI (thick-net) or 10base2 (thin-net/coax) interfaces. 73AUI and 10base2 network cabling is physically incapable of full-duplex 74operation. 75 76(c) Most importantly, your 3c509B must be connected to a link partner that is 77itself full-duplex capable. This is almost certainly one of two things: a full- 78duplex-capable Ethernet switch (*not* a hub), or a full-duplex-capable NIC on 79another system that's connected directly to the 3c509B via a crossover cable. 80 81/////Extremely important caution concerning full-duplex mode///// 82Understand that the 3c509B's hardware's full-duplex support is much more 83limited than that provide by more modern network interface cards. Although 84at the physical layer of the network it fully supports full-duplex operation, 85the card was designed before the current Ethernet auto-negotiation (N-way) 86spec was written. This means that the 3c509B family ***cannot and will not 87auto-negotiate a full-duplex connection with its link partner under any 88circumstances, no matter how it is initialized***. If the full-duplex mode 89of the 3c509B is enabled, its link partner will very likely need to be 90independently _forced_ into full-duplex mode as well; otherwise various nasty 91failures will occur - at the very least, you'll see massive numbers of packet 92collisions. This is one of very rare circumstances where disabling auto- 93negotiation and forcing the duplex mode of a network interface card or switch 94would ever be necessary or desirable. 95 96 97(3) Available Transceiver Types 98 99For versions of the driver v1.18c and above, the available transceiver types are: 100 1010 transceiver type from EEPROM config (normally 10baseT); force half-duplex 1021 AUI (thick-net / DB15 connector) 1032 (undefined) 1043 10base2 (thin-net == coax / BNC connector) 1054 10baseT (RJ-45 connector); force half-duplex mode 1068 transceiver type and duplex mode taken from card's EEPROM config settings 10712 10baseT (RJ-45 connector); force full-duplex mode 108 109Prior to driver version 1.18c, only tranceiver codes 0-4 were supported. Note 110that the new transceiver codes 8 and 12 are the *only* ones that will enable 111full-duplex mode, no matter what the card's detected EEPROM settings might be. 112This insured that merely upgrading the driver from an earlier version would 113never automatically enable full-duplex mode in an existing installation; 114it must always be explicitly enabled via one of these code in order to be 115activated. 116 117 118(4a) Interpretation of error messages and common problems 119 120Error Messages 121 122eth0: Infinite loop in interrupt, status 2011. 123These are "mostly harmless" message indicating that the driver had too much 124work during that interrupt cycle. With a status of 0x2011 you are receiving 125packets faster than they can be removed from the card. This should be rare 126or impossible in normal operation. Possible causes of this error report are: 127 128 - a "green" mode enabled that slows the processor down when there is no 129 keyboard activitiy. 130 131 - some other device or device driver hogging the bus or disabling interrupts. 132 Check /proc/interrupts for excessive interrupt counts. The timer tick 133 interrupt should always be incrementing faster than the others. 134 135No received packets 136If a 3c509, 3c562 or 3c589 can successfully transmit packets, but never 137receives packets (as reported by /proc/net/dev or 'ifconfig') you likely 138have an interrupt line problem. Check /proc/interrupts to verify that the 139card is actually generating interrupts. If the interrupt count is not 140increasing you likely have a physical conflict with two devices trying to 141use the same ISA IRQ line. The common conflict is with a sound card on IRQ10 142or IRQ5, and the easiest solution is to move the 3c509 to a different 143interrupt line. If the device is receiving packets but 'ping' doesn't work, 144you have a routing problem. 145 146Tx Carrier Errors Reported in /proc/net/dev 147If an EtherLink III appears to transmit packets, but the "Tx carrier errors" 148field in /proc/net/dev increments as quickly as the Tx packet count, you 149likely have an unterminated network or the incorrect media tranceiver selected. 150 1513c509B card is not detected on machines with an ISA PnP BIOS. 152While the updated driver works with most PnP BIOS programs, it does not work 153with all. This can be fixed by disabling PnP support using the 3Com-supplied 154setup program. 155 1563c509 card is not detected on overclocked machines 157Increase the delay time in id_read_eeprom() from the current value, 500, 158to an absurdly high value, such as 5000. 159 160 161(4b) Decoding Status and Error Messages 162 163The bits in the main status register are: 164 165value description 1660x01 Interrupt latch 1670x02 Tx overrun, or Rx underrun 1680x04 Tx complete 1690x08 Tx FIFO room available 1700x10 A complete Rx packet has arrived 1710x20 A Rx packet has started to arrive 1720x40 The driver has requested an interrupt 1730x80 Statistics counter nearly full 174 175The bits in the transmit (Tx) status word are: 176 177value description 1780x02 Out-of-window collision. 1790x04 Status stack overflow (normally impossible). 1800x08 16 collisions. 1810x10 Tx underrun (not enough PCI bus bandwidth). 1820x20 Tx jabber. 1830x40 Tx interrupt requested. 1840x80 Status is valid (this should always be set). 185 186 187When a transmit error occurs the driver produces a status message such as 188 189 eth0: Transmit error, Tx status register 82 190 191The two values typically seen here are: 192 1930x82 194Out of window collision. This typically occurs when some other Ethernet 195host is incorrectly set to full duplex on a half duplex network. 196 1970x88 19816 collisions. This typically occurs when the network is exceptionally busy 199or when another host doesn't correctly back off after a collision. If this 200error is mixed with 0x82 errors it is the result of a host incorrectly set 201to full duplex (see above). 202 203Both of these errors are the result of network problems that should be 204corrected. They do not represent driver malfunction. 205 206 207(5) Revision history (this file) 208 20928Feb02 v1.0 DR New; major portions based on Becker original 3c509 docs 210 211